DriveHubCountry guide · Portugal
The 0,40 € per kilometre figure exists in Portugal — and a sole trader may not pay it to themselves
The figure is real, and it may not be yours
Portugal's ceiling for using your own car on business is 0,40 € per kilometre. It is current — Lei n.º 82/2023 (OE 2024) repealed the article that had held it at 0,36, restoring 0,40 from 1 January 2024, and half the Portuguese internet still quotes the old number.
But the harder question is not the digits. It is who is allowed to use them.
CIRS art. 33.º n.º 1 is explicit:
«As remunerações dos titulares de rendimentos da categoria B, assim como (…) utilização de viatura própria ao serviço da atividade (…) não são dedutíveis»
A holder of category B income — an independent worker, a sole trader — cannot deduct paying themselves for using their own car in the activity. Not at 0,40, not at any figure.
So what does a sole trader do instead
You deduct the actual costs of the vehicle, on the terms that apply to your regime — fuel, insurance, maintenance, depreciation, apportioned to business use. That is a different kind of record: receipts and an apportionment, rather than a per-kilometre calculation.
The mileage record still matters, and arguably matters more, because the apportionment between business and private use is the number you have to be able to defend. But it is evidence for a percentage, not the basis of a per-kilometre claim.
Who the 0,40 figure is for
Employees, reimbursed by an employer for using their own car on the employer's business. There the ceiling comes from Portaria n.º 1553-D/2008, and CIRS art. 2.º n.º 3 al. d) makes anything above it taxable as employment income. The rate, its history and when it is taxed are in using your own car for work in Portugal.
The document, if you are in that group
The boletim itinerário — the mapa de deslocações — must show the reason for the journey, the places, the time spent and the objectives. Where an own car is used it must additionally identify the vehicle and its owner, the number of kilometres, the per-kilometre allowance and the total.
The owner is the field that goes missing. Naming the car is not the same as naming who owns it, and the map has to do both.
Why an app rather than a notebook
Nothing above requires software; a notebook does the job. What software changes is the failure mode — and for a sole trader working out an apportionment, the failure is not a missing trip but a missing denominator: the private driving that never gets written down, without which the business share is a guess.
With location access set to Always, DriveHub records every drive in the background — and if it ever misses one, it tells you. It files most trips as Business or Personal by your places, past routes and working hours, and asks you about the rest. That is the number the apportionment needs.
For the boletim itself, the report prints the reason for each journey in your own words and names the vehicle's owner on a line of its own — you, where the car is yours.
The one thing left to you is the signature. The tax authority's binding ruling PIV 21076 holds that a km map must be signed by the person it belongs to, so the last page leaves a line for you, one for whoever approves it, and a date. DriveHub leaves the signing to you rather than drawing a signature that would not count.
This page quotes the CIRS articles by number so you can read them. It is not tax advice. It can't account for your circumstances — and this is a page about who a rule excludes, which is exactly the kind of question worth putting to a contabilista certificado before you file.
Do it in DriveHub
Country, official rates, your own rate and when a change applies.
The full rule for Portugal, with the instruments it comes from: mileage log requirements in Portugal.