In a way, I'm kind of surprised that the IRS doesn't encourage credit card use. It seems like they would save on both labor and the risks inherent with paper checks, collections, etc. if they just accepted plastic directly.

I mean, in the absence of a 2x SPG deal, I put a paper check in the mail on the night of April 15th. Somebody at a big processing center has to open my mail, manually process the paperwork, get the paper check passed along to get cashed, and it finally comes out of my account sometime in late April.

If I sent 'em $100, I'd be willing to bet it costs them more than $2 to process it.

Obviously if I owe $100,000, it's a different story. The labor costs are fixed, the risk of a bad check is maybe a little higher, but the juice is now a lot higher. Still...maybe if they capped it or said only individual 1040's were eligible. I guess they just have a good thing going as is: a lot of us are, for the most part, willing to pay a third party, making things easy for The Man.