OK I am an IRS employee in my day job as a contact rep on the biz hotline ...

so here's my .02

USING CARDS TO PAY YOUR TAXES IS A RIPOFF IF YOU WANT MILES!

At least if the tax payment sites want more than 2.5 per cent to give your credit limits to your uncle

Most airlines SELL their miles for less than .03 per mile. Research your airline, research your tax payment site, do the math, and watch your mind get blown!

And for small employers, the temptation to use CC to get FF miles can be LETHAL! The tax payment sites themselves warn their systems are not for payroll deposits, because even in their moneygrubbing hearts they know it's suicide for those guys to use CC cards to get more FF miles!

And the businessmen and women scream to high heaven when I parrot the tax payment site line!

If you would read the previous posts in this thread, you would see that is about the opportunity to buy miles/point at less than 1.245 cents each. Official Payments collects 2.49% "vigorish" ("convenience fee"), but SPG AmEx and UA Visa were giving "double miles" for use of their cards to make these tax payments. At 1.245 cents per UA mile or SPG point, I don't think it a ripoff at all.

No comment on the value. But got mine today (UA double) two months after I paid the extentsion...promptly cancelled the card...time for a new 20,000 miles. Cheers to all... ^

5000 SPG points posted 6/29 ^ ^

Mine posted 6/29 as well! ^

cincypix:

Sorry - but you are wrong. I got 5,000 + 5,000 (bonus... today) = 10,000 Starpoints for $124.50 .. That is 1.245 cent/point.I can exchange this to airmiles and get 25% (20,000P = 25.000M),
AND: You can receive (another) 30% more BA Miles when you transfer your hotel points to BA Miles between April 20 and July 20, 2006.
http://www.britishairways.com/travel...ct=RD_HOTELPTM

Even with Starwood it's a good deal: I pay $124.50 for a nice hotel, which would have cost $200+...OK, I don't get points for that night, but I kept $5,000 for another month 'in my pocket'

I'll agree with you - to a point! (I am an ex-IRS tax auditor! )

I agree that at 2.5%, it does not make sense to pay for your tax bill with plastic. But at the times that the credit card companies (such as with the UA Visa) offer double miles, the cost is esentially $0.0125/mile! That is the only time I use plastic for the IRS!

I just had a $25+K bill that yielded over 51,000 miles. The cost was $522 or ~$0.0103/mile!

Although it cost a few miles more, it felt good to get a trip to Asia for paying your IRS bill!

Earlier in this thread, there is a post stating that you could charge an additional $5k to your wife's card in addition to your personal card. There was a suggestion that this would net an overall 10k Star Point bonus (instead of the 5k bonus for just your card).

I did this and have only received the 5k bonus for my card...anyone been able to score the 10k bonus? Is there a way to appeal this lack of bonus for the wife's card (which is linked to my Starwood point account and I receive Starwood Points for her other charges).

It seems by 07 even more receipients of taxes, etc will accept them.

If your wife is an authorized user on your card, then you can't get an additional 5K bonus. It only works if each of you is the primary owner of a Starwood AIX car.

I appreciate the sentiment and in general your point is spot on. But for double Starpoints where I know I have a near-term redemption need at a real value between 3 and 4 cents per point, I will happily run my tax payment through Amex to buy the points for 1.3-ish cents apiece. It's an easy win for me.

Would I run a massive tax payment through on my Amex, buying a huge pool of Starpoints at 2.5 cents each? Probably not - I'd have to be pretty darn certain I had a near-term redemption for a trip I absolutely needed to take where no other hotel options were available. But I only owed the Man around $6k this year, so it was an easy call to do it for the Double Points promo.

Well, cincypix, a month later, several folks have posted the research they have done (don't underestimate FT'ers ability to do the math around points), and we've yet to hear back from you. I've redeemed SPG points at 4-8 cents each over the last year and also feel that buying points this way, at about 1.25 cents each, is a valuable approach.

Do you still feel THIS IS A RIPOFF? If so, please reply to the points raised.

And so did mine!

I've read through the thread and I didn't see anything explicit regarding this subject, so let me pose the question here:

For those of you who are doing quarterly payments, which ("good") offers are still open? From what I can tell:
- MP Visa is still doing double bonus through 12/31/06 on federal/state/local
- SPG and Delta AmEx are no longer doing any bonus

For what it's worth, I did my June payment on the Juniper US MC. I figured that 1.5x bonus was better than nothing, and that (with an extra 1.5 month's worth of interest in HSBC online savings) gets me down to around 1.4 CPM. However, I'm considering getting the MP Visa for the double bonus (taxes add up quick!)

It's probably too late for this quarter for you, but the Amex Delta business card I have keeps having "double bonus on everything" offers. The bonuses require an online signup.