The Government is about to develop an e-residency program in 2020, to encourage investment, technology, and innovation, and enable foreign entrepreneurs to deal with their Portuguese company's bureaucracies from overseas.
As established in the Executive’s program, the 2020-2023 plan of the XXII Governo Constitucional foresees a bet on the entrepreneurial ecosystem, similar to what has been happening in recent years.
The goal is to allow foreign applicants to be granted rights regardless of their physical location, emulating the Estonian model implemented in 2014. In this sense, foreign citizens:
Will be able to manage a company in Portugal no matter where they live;
Won’t need to physically visit all entities and services for the process, as they can do everything online;
Can obtain a tax identification number;
Set up a company;
Fulfill tax obligations;
Develop economic activity in Portugal.
Besides the e-residency program, there will also be other reinforcements:
Promote the StartUP Visa, for foreign entrepreneurs;
Tech Visa, created to attract highly qualified talent;
Boosting Port Tech Clusters, to turn ports into innovation ecosystems for the blue economy, uniting startups, mature companies and Research & Development centers in the same space and fostering the creation of a connection platform between Small and Medium Companies, Non-Governmental Organizations and startups.
E-residency will, therefore, allow access to public services without the need for foreign citizens to be physically in Portugal, but at the same time contributing to the spread of entrepreneurship and the creation of wealth in Portugal.
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In addition, the Government led by António Costa intends to extend the KEEP tax incentive program (Key Employee Engagement Programme) and the Semente program (designed to support individual investors who want to enter the share capital of innovative startups) and implement one-stop shops exclusively dedicated to startups and tourism companies.
Portugal also offers other residency options such as the Non-Habitual Residency Programme, where you can benefit from reduced or no taxations on your income, or the Golden Visa Programme, where you can invest a minimum of 280k on real estate and be granted residency rights. Learn more about Citizenship by Investment VS. Residency by Investment here.
Source: uglobal.com
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