2003 Elimination of certain public benefits from key B

From 2003 onwards, Law 46/2002, of December 18, on the partial reform of Personal Income Tax, establishes as a new feature the exemption of public orphan's pension benefits, resulting in changes in the group of Pensioners (taxable and non-exempt income). For the purposes of form 190, while orphan's pensions before 2003 were included within code B of earnings, with this change, they are now in code L -Exempt income- subcode 08, and, therefore, outside the earnings codes studied.

Therefore, in the statistics on the Labor Market and Pensions in tax sources, orphan's pensions are excluded from the scope of study, as they are differentiated from the rest of the pensions of code B and are not susceptible to the object of study of the pensioners group, that is, contributory pensions.

According to sources other than tax authorities, in 2004 the number of contributory orphan's pensions under the general scheme was estimated at around 160,000.