The WSJ reporter ran her story Saturday about the ff benefits of charging taxes. She notes the AMEX bonuses as follows:

"The Starwood Preferred Guest American Express card, which yields points in the loyalty program for Westin, Sheraton and others, is offering double points on the first $5,000 of personal federal taxes paid. American Express Co. is giving away double Delta Air Lines miles on federal taxes too, but with a higher cap of 30,000 to 100,000 bonus miles depending on which Delta AmEx card that you use.

The cards are also offering separate 20% mileage bonuses on all base charges through April 30; register at americanexpress.com/deltabonus. With both bonuses, you'll earn 2.2 miles per dollar of tax charges."

In my situation, it's a no-brainer to "max out" the Starwood $5000 offer. I also have a Delta AMEX card, which I acquired on a promo last fall to "top off" my SkyMiles account for a particular award. As a OnePass platinum, I don't otherwise have much use for my SkyMiles AMEX card or the SkyMiles program in general.

That said, 2.2 miles per dollar of tax charges with a 2.5% fee is a "credible" offer. I'm personally "on the fence" regarding using it to pay my additional taxes. I'm leaning toward NOT using it, mostly because of the difficulty in finding SkyMiles reward seats. For example, if I could easily redeem 35,000 SkyMiles for a ticket to Hawaii, it would be worth paying slightly more than a penny for the miles (since, from the East Coast, it's hard to fly to Hawaii for $400). But given the heroic efforts required to obtain such a seat, it's hard for me to pre-pay for SkyMiles at more than a penny.

Any thoughts?