The Representativeness of Portuguese Touristic Business and tax Procedures in their Creation

Abstract

Several countries assume tourism activity as a strategy, recognized as a system that represents a value chain, extending to activities that are related indirectly. In 2019, that sector was responsible for 52,3% of the services exportation, representing the most significant exporting activity in Portugal, which allows higher contributions to employability and economy. To give a response to this demand phenomenon, the economy increases and diversifies the offer, ensuring an efficient response to the visitors' needs. The touristic offer has different dimensions such as accommodation, transports, food and beverage and entertainment activities. The main goal of this paper is to understand the impact and contribution of tourism companies to the Portuguese economy, in particular, their representativeness and dynamic in the Portuguese business. This study analyses several legal dispositions to understand the procedures that companies face developing their businesses within the tourism area, therefore, the commercial, business and tax laws were investigated. Using an exploratory and descriptive methodology, considering the period between 2008 to 2018, it analyses the relevance of tourism companies in the economic sphere, using secondary data from different institutions, namely, National Statistics Institute - Instituto Nacional de Estatística (INE), Bank of Portugal - Banco de Portugal (BP), Tourism of Portugal - Turismo de Portugal (TP), and other sources considered relevant for this investigation. The results show that these companies face heavy bureaucracy procedures to provide services. Portuguese jurisdiction imposes several obligations that represent a significant increase in costs. According to the INE, in 2018, this sector represented 8.9% of the non-financial companies and 6.4% of the gross added value. Accommodation companies form about one-third of this area. In the dimension domain, the micro-businesses are more typical as the medium-sized companies represent 0.7%, and the less representative are the big dimension enterprises standing for 0.1%.