US Bank (NWA Visa).

Reduced "convenience" fee: 1.99% for credit cards
Flat $3.95 for Debit.

http://www.usbank.com/cgi_w/cfm/prom...WT.mc_id=r4636

Chase has the promo where one gets 10,000 miles to open a checking account. Plus 5,000 for the Debit Card.

https://www.chase.com/ccp/index.jsp?...&ID=0000009116

Big tax bill
 

Thinking about charging it on one or more of my credit cards.

Official Payments charges 2.49% fee. TurboTax apparently has a way to charge your credit card but it looks like they're using officialpayments.com so the bill is likely the same.

The cards I have are:

1. SkyMiles Amex Platinum
2. Starwood Amex
3. Schwab Visa with 2% back on all purchases

That fee is steep but then again, I guess if I pay with a check, I would get no rewards of any kind.

The bill for federal and state is about $45k.

My Amex cards each have a limit of $21k each. Schwab is the only one to which I can charge it all.

So which combo of rewards and charges would have the most benefit?

I guess I could get close to 10k MQM with the SkyMiles Amex or charge $40k and transfer 50k miles with the 20% transfer bonus.

Or get 2% of the total bill back to my Schwab account.

With the Amex cards, I'd have to charge more than once, if trying to charge it to one or the other, not both.

Anyone else charge big tax payments to credit cards?

Or just better writing a check?

You'd pay 2.49% to get 2.0% back?

I suppose the float would be helpful in some circumstances, but still...

Er I wasn't thinking.

Actually, I'd thought the fee would only be 1%.

So I guess it's a matter of whether 10,000 MQM is worth that 2.49% fee, which would be $1100-1200.

Or it would be 40,000 SPG points, which could be 50k SkyMiles.

I guess the best deal would be the 10,000 MQM, which you'd get in addition to the 45k miles, for the $45k in charges.

SPG doesn't have a threshold bonus like SkyMiles Amex Platinum?

Actually, I would get 10,000 MQM for $25k in charges but if I charged $45k, I'd be most of the way towards a second 10,000 MQM?

Is there really only a net cost of 0.49% to pay with the credit card? If that were the case, then when was earning a 6% or higher return on there money (not many such opportunities these days, except perhaps in loansharking), they might actually come out ahead with the float. I doubt that Schwab and the bank issuer of the card have set things up in such a way as to permit that.

When Chase is giving out airline miles, it treats a tax payment made subject to that 2.49% as it does other purchases, that is without anything like a cash advance fee. With a credit card that rebates money rather than gives you miles or points, I wonder if they too treat tax payments the same as ordinary purchases with the card rather than impose a cash advance fee in addition to the 2.49% "convenience fee" that Officialpayments imposes for handling the tax payment. Take care lest this cost you substantially more than you anticipated.

Also, you may not be able to use a combination of credit cards to make tax payments through Officialpayments. There are money laundering rules and regs that affect these transactions, and I was told last year that one could make only one credit card payment per Social Security/TIN.

I talked to Amex customer service on the phone and the reps. there didn't seem too sure whether charges through officialpayments.com wouldn't be eligible. But they didn't see anything that would rule it out.

The stuff they exclude are things like cash advances and the annual fee of the card.

But just to make sure I logged in and got a written statement saying the charges would count and would also count towards the 10,000 MQM mileage boost.

Also got an email from Officialpayments.com saying they process multiple charges. Might have to do it over the phone rather than through the web site.

I also requested a credit increase from Amex but they said 7-10 days before an answer!

What if you paid your taxes to AMEX as an online payment that would give you a credit amount on your account, then charge the full amount to one card even if the amount is above your limit. As you have a credit, would you then not be exceeding your limit if you pre-paid the money to amex, therefore getting all the benefits of the transaction?

wrong thread

"Eligible" for exactly what? If it is AmEx MR, airlines miles, hotel points (e.g., SPG), or the like, I don't know of any reason to doubt it. Chase gives mileage credit for a tax payment through officialpayments.com the same way that it does for other charges, and one gets mileage credit for the "convenience fee" payment in the same way too. What I wonder is whether a card that rebates 1 or 2% cash treats these tax payments the same way as it does payments for good and services, when the merchant/provider is paying a few percent vigorish on the transaction to the card issuer. I would want to be very, very sure that AmEx or whichever card issuers was involved would not treat it as a cash advance, tacking on those fees, which could make it a very costly way to get miles or points.

Tax payments have never been treated as a cash advance.

Amex even advertises on the site: https://www.officialpayments.com/so_...tus=incomplete

From their FAQ:

I'm not surprised. Chase doesn't treat it as a cash advance with its UA MP Visa card either. But what about a card like the Schwab one that gives a cash rebate, not miles or points? I still wonder if between them the issuing bank and officialpayments.com split 2.49% between them and rebate 2% of the total, about 2.01%, netting only 0.48% for advancing the IRS its money 100 cents on the dollar and waiting for the customer to pay that 2.49%, hoping that the customer does not default on his/her obligation to pay the credit card debt.

So to summarize for those who are still reading and don't want to sift through a lot of outdated info:

As of February 2009, no card is currently offering a bonus for paying your taxes with a credit card.

???

Not expecting a bonus, just that they treat it like any other charges, as opposed to a cash advance or something.

And if they offer bonuses for certain accumulated charges, they better honor them, even if those levels were reached by paying taxes with their cards.