Remote Working in Portugal - Income tax?

Many years ago one of my colleagues just left Ireland after 10 years in Dublin and relocated "unofficially" back to Portugal where he was from, he deregistered from the Portuguese embassy before moving back, keeping his job and PAYE wage in Ireland. Our direct management team was fully based in the U.S. back then so they didn't care and proably didn't even know where Portugal and Ireland were in the map or about any tax implications. As long as the work was done, everyone was happy. (We are programmers so our job can be done 100% remote). He kept getting paid in Ireland as a PAYE employee while living in Portugal. Still even after paying the PAYE tax in Ireland, his net pay was roughly 2.5 times what he would get for the same position if he had been employed by the local office in Lisbon (our company had already a office and employees in Lisbon), but he was working only from home in the north of Portugal, on a PAYE wage, for the U.S. team. He only got into a bit of troubles after 5 or 6 years when he pulled a relatively large sum of money from Ireland back to Portugal to buy a house. He got into a bit of troubles not with Revenue, but with the local notary public or similar who had to prove where the money was coming from, as he had no income reported in Portugal since he had finished college, and now suddendly that large sum coming from Ireland. I think he fixed it quite easily paying some additional tax and penlties and he had to finally give up his irish PAYE wage and get a Portuguese contract instead with the company, (cutting his net pay by 2.5 times).
 
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