The STI's reading comes after a news item recently published by Público about the legal obligation of those who receive tips (employers, such as restaurants and their employees, for example) to have to declare them so that these amounts can be taxed.

Given the lack of resources and the difficulty in operationalising the inspection of tips, the president of the STI considers that the legal obligations regarding this type of gratuity end up being "worthless".

According to the IRS Code, "gratuities received for the provision of or by reason of the provision of work, when not granted by the employer or by an entity with which it maintains group, control or simple participation relations, regardless of its geographical location, are taxed autonomously at a rate of 10%".

"We have no way of monitoring these situations", Gonçalo Rodrigues told Lusa, stating that the work could be made easier if, for example, it were possible to resort to a mechanism such as the 'undercover agent'.

Thus, the union leader points out that even if the inspector verifies one of these tax evasion situations in person, the "Tax and Customs Authority [AT] itself does not give him the authority to act", issuing a report as happens, for example, when an authority officer sees a motorist running a red light or talking on a mobile phone while driving.

In a statement, the STI states that, although the declared value of tips is increasing, "reality shows that it is impossible to know how much money is actually circulating in tips", and this is just "another indicator that shows the growth of the parallel economy and the increasing tax evasion with the consequent social injustice that this phenomenon creates".

Speaking of a "snowball that keeps growing", the president of the STI states that in terms of inspections, the number has gone from "80 to minus eight", pointing to the lack of human, technical and organisational resources.