SIBA and children under 12 — what hosts must file for minors

Minors are exempt from tourist tax in most municipalities but are not exempt from SIBA. How to file babies, children and teenagers, and how to link them to an accompanying adult.

This is the single most common misunderstanding we see from AL hosts: "the children are under 12, so I don't have to declare them." That is true for tourist tax in most municipalities. It is not true for SIBA.

The rule

Every foreign national staying in your accommodation must be communicated — including babies and children of any age. There is no minimum age.

What changes with age is:

Filing a child correctly and exempting them from tourist tax are two separate actions — do both.

What document does a child need?

A child needs their own travel document. In practice:

EU children normally hold their own national ID card or passport.
Non-EU children hold their own passport, or in rarer cases appear on a parent's passport (older documents from some countries).
If the child genuinely appears only on a parent's document, file the child using the parent's document number and note the relationship.

A child cannot be filed without a document reference at all — that record will be rejected.

Linking to an accompanying adult

SIBA expects a minor to be accompanied. A record for a 4-year-old with no adult on the same stay is treated as an error. When filing:

1. File the accompanying adult(s) first.

2. File the minor for the same property, same check-in date.

3. Where the field is available, reference the accompanying adult.

Teenagers travelling alone

A 16- or 17-year-old travelling without a parent is still a minor. Portuguese AL rules generally require an accompanying adult or a written parental authorisation for unaccompanied minors. That is a separate check-in policy question — but the SIBA filing itself is normal.

Tourist tax: the part that is age-dependent

Most Portuguese municipalities exempt children under 12 (some under 13, some under 16) from the municipal tourist tax. In Madeira the exemption is age 12 and under. Because thresholds differ by council:

Record each guest's date of birth, not just "child".
Let the calculation work out the exemption from the age on the date of stay, not the age today.

Chave AL stores date of birth per guest, files everyone to SIBA regardless of age, and automatically excludes exempt minors from the tourist tax declaration.

Quick checklist

[ ] Every child has a document reference on their record
[ ] Every child is filed to SIBA within three working days of arrival
[ ] Every child is linked to an accompanying adult on the same stay
[ ] Date of birth recorded so the tourist tax exemption applies automatically
[ ] Children still counted in the monthly INE / IPHH overnight stays