I moved to the UK in early September 2018, opened a Monzo account right away. I only informed the Portuguese authorities that I was a UK resident in late September 2018.
Lo and behold, the Portuguese Exchequer has warned that all “digital bank accounts” held outside Portugal have to be reported in the 2018 income statement form. This only applies to banks with a full banking licence (e.g. Monzo and N26, but not Revolut). Because I was only, oficially, a UK resident in late September, this means that, for tax purposes, I opened my Monzo account while I still was a Portuguese tax resident.
This is no biggie - I just need to enter the IBAN, i.e. let them know I have this account.
The problem is that I can’t find Monzo’s IBAN anywhere: I understand Monzo doesn’t receive transfers from abroad, but it’s gotta have an IBAN. Monzo’s in-app chat tells me “Monzo does not use IBAN” - this can’t be right and I asked for an escalation.
Do you know if the information on Transferwise’s website correct?
I don’t think this is relevant. If I’ve understood @dave-bowman properly, he just has to enter his bank account details on a Portugese government form, rather than transfer any money. The problem is that they want it as an IBAN, not a sort code / account number.
I know this might be difficult in the face of bureaucracy, but @dave-bowman, would you be able to contact the Portuguese authorities to let them know you need to provide the information in a different form?
That’s exactly what’s going on. They just want me to enter the IBAN/BIC of my Monzo account, for “anti tax evading purposes”.
I took a leap of faith and used the IBAN’s (iban.com) IBAN generator (now that’s a mouthful) for Monzo. As far as I understand, IBAN is a standard, i.e. Monzo does not need to apply for an IBAN number (IBAN is pretty much like an ISO code come to think of it). I checked some sort of FAQ on Monzo’s website and that’s also the impression I got from them .
I honestly think that’ll be enough for the Portuguese tax authorities. They just want to have an account identifier that uses an international standard - and judging from what I’m reading on Portuguese news, they won’t go after anyone this year (this only became an issue because of digital banks, really - this law only used to matter for people who had accounts in e.g. Switzerland or the BVI or something. This suddenly became an issue because of the massive number of N26 clients in Portugal). Monzo should definitely look into this though- the lack of an “official” IBAN goes beyond international transfers complications: this is a tax compliance “headache” that could have been avoided.
P.S. - but I think I’ll call the jovial people at the tax office call centre next week just to confirm if I can’t actually provide them with a UK sort code instead.
