Today, I paid $400 of US federal estimated income tax with my Chase Continental non-preferred personal debit MasterCard via payusatax for just the $3.89 flat fee, but the transaction posted to my account without the "CA*" code that indicates earnings of Continetnal Airline OnePass miles. So, I probably won't get any miles for it. [Edit 8/24/2010: A ray of hope! A test retail transaction also did not show "CA*" while "Pending." Maybe "CA*" is only added after the transaction is no longer pending. Stay tuned.] [Edit 8/26/2010: It again looks like I will not get the miles. The transactions are no longer "pending" and the tax payment is not maked "CA*" while the test retail transaction after it is.]

The other debit payment processors mentioned in http://www.irs.gov/efile/article/0,,id=101316,00.html apparently do not support debit MasterCard except as a credit card for the credit card fee. I suspect that payusatax's support is related to their announcement in April 2010 of some degree of MasterCard support (see http://pul.se/payUSAtax-Now-Accepts-...u,bxY1fELlJ18E ).

The rest of this message is probably only of interest to people who want to test other debit cards or attempt to duplicate DCBob's success with SunTrust/Delta (messages 51 and 64).

For anyone who wants to test other debit cards, when you fill out the "Payment Information" screen with your debit card number and click "Continue, you will be prompted with three buttons, "Back", "Process as Debit Card" and "Continue". Do not click "Process as Debit Card" (although your browser back button will bring you back here if you make this mistake), but instead click "Continue" again, and it will show you the $3.89 price.

When I did that, the next screen only showed the Star, NYCE and Pulse logos. I would be interested in hearing from anyone attepmting to reproduce DCBob's success in getting Delta miles this way with his SunTrust debit card what logos they see on this page, just on the off chance that the choice of debit network is related to why DCBob scored miles from this technique. By the way, for anyone considering trying to duplicate DCBob's success, it looks like Suntrust is having some kind of double miles promotion for their Delta debit cards (new customers only?) until the end of the month (see https://www.suntrust.com/portal/serv...heck_card/1905 ).

For anyone considering contributing to this research by trying other debit cards, here are a few notes. BofA explicitly disqualifies tax payments from earning rewards in the descriptions of their USAir and Alaska debit cards. Before getting involced with perkstreet.com for their claimed 2% cash back visa debit card please read the warnings by user AV at http://www.thesunsfinancialdiary.com...-2-cash-offer/ . Finally, be aware that the Chase RealCash debit card does not award any cash back for purcahses outside of their selected categories. I believe I have also read at least one report of Citi denying points for some cash-like but non-PIN debit card purchase on the grounds that it was not "signature-based." Other debit rewards cards I know of are: Wells Fargo (have to pay $12/year, for which you earn 0.25%), Chase Ultimate Rewards (0.8% cash capped at $300 a year, but remaining points can be used for other rewards), and Chase Debit United Mileage Plus debit card.

I don't know if any other cards are worth testing at this point, but if you're planning to pay your taxes by debit card using one of the flat fee services for whatever reason, I am sure it would be useful to hear about your results, if for no other reason that to scratch other cards off of the list.