ATO (tax office) payments by credit card

[mark4217]

Bring on more F redemptions I say!!. That aside I also think that since the government has flagged the capping of fees and charges the airlines and banks have had some serious arm wrestling on how to maneuver around this conundrum vying for a win/win and the answer clearly is dropping the earn rate. There will be little earn for the banks when they are forced to reduce charges so may as well pass the pain to the customer, with the hope of not completely upsetting them with the new rates. The big 4 have been aware of the inevitable for many months and have taken turns when to hit the market with there changes to points redemption rates. AMEX I notice have been quietly sitting on the side line watching how this all pans out. My prophesy is Amex will be preparing for an Australian points shake up in the coming months!!. There be my rant or conspiracy theory

 

[Cynicor]

Maybe there's something I'm not getting - how is that information shared between the bank and QFF?

What if someone earns a number of points via other means (ie flying), but also earns the same amount from a bank issued cc, then the person makes a redemption - who gets charged and when? How do they tell where the points are coming from, if there are enough points from either source to make the redemption?

What you aren't getting is that you're both talking about different things!

The banks get charged when a (say) commbank point gets turned into a VA or QF points. Serty has used the word "redeemed" to mean this, hence the confusion. The breakage is in a lot of points earned that are never spent even to be transferred into airlines or into toasters. If you balance is very high then you are also more likely to be spending the points on the high value redemptions with less markup. I.e. Getting airline points rather than toasters.

Doing this enough muddles up the numbers because they banked on more high profit toasters being redeemed, and less low profit SQ points.

 

[mark4217]

Bring on more F redemptions I say!!. That aside I also think that since the government has flagged the capping of fees and charges the airlines and banks have had some serious arm wrestling on how to maneuver around this conundrum vying for a win/win and the answer clearly is dropping the earn rate. There will be little earn for the banks when they are forced to reduce

 

[mark4217]

Sorry can someone delete the double up above. Sorry, not sure how I managed that?.

 

[cove]

It appears that Woolies are now paying up to 1.15 cents for Qantas points as they are running with $10 of Woolies promo dollars equals 870 Qantas points. If you allow no room for a conversion margin then the most they pay is that 1.15 cent number.
Qantas are likely to want to get paid monthly so it would appear that Woolies would get an invoice for around $5 million to $10 million a month plus gst on the domestic portion of the flights used in Australia. Well that is what looks likely based purely on some arithmetic and guess work.
Citibank,CBA,NAB and soon ANZ (Feb26/27) will mostly be out of ATO points/miles earn. Westpac Black Amex points are being delivered at 0.75 points/miles per dollar so the cost recovery is about 1.93 cents per point/mile ( less any tax deduction value if applicable). That could be 1.75 cents plus gst of course and I think Westpac could recover the gst monthly.
Naturally it would be nice to get the guesswork checked but that is what I think could be the position.
If you take up a 250,000 Qantas point earn on a NAB housing loan then that bank would have to build in a way to recover almost $3,000 that would need to be built into the term of that loan.

 

[andye]

.... Woolies would get an invoice for around $5 million to $10 million a month plus gst on the domestic portion of the flights used in Australia....

Do you think someone at WW is putting that through on the corporate Amex?

 

[RooFlyer]

It appears that Woolies are now paying up to 1.15 cents for Qantas points as they are running with $10 of Woolies promo dollars equals 870 Qantas points. If you allow no room for a conversion margin then the most they pay is that 1.15 cent number.
Qantas are likely to want to get paid monthly so it would appear that Woolies would get an invoice for around $5 million to $10 million a month plus gst on the domestic portion of the flights used in Australia. Well that is what looks likely based purely on some arithmetic and guess work.
Citibank,CBA,NAB and soon ANZ (Feb26/27) will mostly be out of ATO points/miles earn. Westpac Black Amex points are being delivered at 0.75 points/miles per dollar so the cost recovery is about 1.93 cents per point/mile ( less any tax deduction value if applicable). That could be 1.75 cents pl calculationus gst of course and I think Westpac could recover the gst monthly.
Naturally it would be nice to get the guesswork checked but that is what I think could be the position.
If you take up a 250,000 Qantas point earn on a NAB housing loan then that bank would have to build in a way to recover almost $3,000 that would need to be built into the term of that loan.

I don't follow all of your arguments, sorry but I can't see the Woolies points payment value of 1.15 cents being correct. Should they purchase points from Qantas at, say 0.1 cents/point, they could still make $10 W dollars = 870 points and in fact would do nicely if people thought this an attractive deal.

 

[cove]

I guess there could be a range of prices for Qantas points cost but I would be surprised if that cost would be under one cent per point.
Serfty was thinking some are paying $6 million a year on their BAS. The business next door to us have a group turnover of more than $500 million and their monthly BAS would be eye watering.
Over at the big retailers like Woolies and Coles they would have corporate governance that mostly prevents their executives from sticking in credit cards for massive frequent flyer points. Benefits have to be reported.
To those businesses paying endless amounts of tax I would have thought a thank you card from the ATO would be possible.

 

[Kangol]

What you aren't getting is that you're both talking about different things!

The banks get charged when a (say) commbank point gets turned into a VA or QF points. Serty has used the word "redeemed" to mean this, hence the confusion. The breakage is in a lot of points earned that are never spent even to be transferred into airlines or into toasters. If you balance is very high then you are also more likely to be spending the points on the high value redemptions with less markup. I.e. Getting airline points rather than toasters.

Doing this enough muddles up the numbers because they banked on more high profit toasters being redeemed, and less low profit SQ points.

Thanks for the clarification. So you aren't talking about direct earn QFF points - which is what I reasonably interpreted given the previous posts.
I wonder what the proportion of bank-issued points that get redeemed for high vs low value redemptions is..

 

[Scr77]

I chuckled when the defence force paid their account with a CC yesterday. I did ask and apparently they do not get points.

 

[Limewood]

Is it that ANZ Plat. cards will not be able to be used to get FF points when paying for financial services like tax can anyone confirm this?

 

[burnt]

Pretty sure ALL ANZ cards will be no good, has anybody had any problem with the way the ATO portal is working in the last few days, ie payments or refunds?

 

[deka2]

Pretty sure ALL ANZ cards will be no good, has anybody had any problem with the way the ATO portal is working in the last few days, ie payments or refunds?

The Portal was down for Maintenance for part of the weekend.

It went back up at 9.00am yesterday

 

[cove]

Wow Deka2 you were looking at the ATO payments portal on a Sunday. I think you should receive a thank you note from them.
We still have ANZ Black to run with until late February so are you thinking we should start early with our 3 cards?

 

[deka2]

I wasn't working Cove

The ATO now kindly send out an SMS informing us of any downtime.

Agree with hitting the ANZ black for the next 2 months

Lucky the December quarterly PAYG notices are coming out with a due date of 28th Feb.

 

[cove]

Gee I really miss being in that tax industry. My 32 year anniversary of being out of it just went by on 31/12 so I don't receive an SMS nor a thank you card.
I burnt off some Kris Miles that were expiring in February so I can use Westpac Kris Flyer Platinum Amex.

 

[Limewood]

Pretty sure ALL ANZ cards will be no good, has anybody had any problem with the way the ATO portal is working in the last few days, ie payments or refunds?

So what bank or store cards will be OK for FF points paying like tax after Feb?.

 

[Saurs82]

Just wondering where the info about ANZ card no longer taking ATo payments came from? I can use my anz card until end of Feb though is that right? What card next then? Jetstar?

 

[Mark3000]

There was an insert with the last ANZ statement.

 

[Saurs82]

There was an insert with the last ANZ statement.

Ahh should probably read those thankyou