ATO (tax office) payments by credit card

catear said:
Hi i'm new so I'm still trying to get my head around this and have trouble going through 400+ pages, so can someone have a look at my calculation and work out where i'm going wrong.

I have dragon sig card and paying personal tax i'm being charged 0.78% or $78 per $10,000.

for every $10,000 i pay with the card, I get either 8,250 Qantas points or 16,500 amp pts (including 10% bday bonus).

to fly to Melb return from Syd I need 60,010 amp pt (via their reward website) or pay $36,370 (60,010 / 1.1 / 1.5) with the card to get that many points which would accrued $283 worth of fees. Same flight cost $270 on Qantas website.

Using the same calculation, I need 16,000 Qantas points, or spend $19,394 (16,000 / 1.1 / 0.75) and that's about $151 of fees.

So at most I'm saving $120 with Qantas points or pay $13 more with amp pts
card fees for personal tax are not tax deductible
am I doing the numbers right?
Click to expand...


You dont use rewards point to book Economy - It's a big NO NO
 
catear said:
Hi i'm new so I'm still trying to get my head around this and have trouble going through 400+ pages, so can someone have a look at my calculation and work out where i'm going wrong.

I have dragon sig card and paying personal tax i'm being charged 0.78% or $78 per $10,000.

for every $10,000 i pay with the card, I get either 8,250 Qantas points or 16,500 amp pts (including 10% bday bonus).

to fly to Melb return from Syd I need 60,010 amp pt (via their reward website) or pay $36,370 (60,010 / 1.1 / 1.5) with the card to get that many points which would accrued $283 worth of fees. Same flight cost $270 on Qantas website.

Using the same calculation, I need 16,000 Qantas points, or spend $19,394 (16,000 / 1.1 / 0.75) and that's about $151 of fees.

So at most I'm saving $120 with Qantas points or pay $13 more with amp pts
card fees for personal tax are not tax deductible
am I doing the numbers right?
Click to expand...

Your calculations are reasonable but your use of points is not. Most here would be using those points for a business flight worth $800 or more. Personally, I’d be putting 16,000 qff points towards long haul business or first.
 
catear said:
Hi i'm new so I'm still trying to get my head around this and have trouble going through 400+ pages, so can someone have a look at my calculation and work out where i'm going wrong.

I have dragon sig card and paying personal tax i'm being charged 0.78% or $78 per $10,000.

for every $10,000 i pay with the card, I get either 8,250 Qantas points or 16,500 amp pts (including 10% bday bonus).

to fly to Melb return from Syd I need 60,010 amp pt (via their reward website) or pay $36,370 (60,010 / 1.1 / 1.5) with the card to get that many points which would accrued $283 worth of fees. Same flight cost $270 on Qantas website.

Using the same calculation, I need 16,000 Qantas points, or spend $19,394 (16,000 / 1.1 / 0.75) and that's about $151 of fees.

So at most I'm saving $120 with Qantas points or pay $13 more with amp pts
card fees for personal tax are not tax deductible
am I doing the numbers right?
Click to expand...

The way I look at it, if it's "only" $10k or so per year then it's not worth it as for $139 you could have got 90k from a sign up bonus from a current sign up offer or paid $0 for the ANZ black and got 75k QF points.

Others are pushing some good numbers through their cards to pay "the man" so it's all a numbers game and everyone has a different set of rules and requirements.
 
Scr77 said:
/-Pay has been a let down. Funds loaded to virtual card but unable to spend with ato for the last 2 days. Not a reliable solution at all.
Click to expand...
has this issue been resolved? i planned to pay a small amount this weekend until i read your post :oops:
 
ramamba said:
has this issue been resolved? i planned to pay a small amount this weekend until i read your post :oops:
Click to expand...

I made 4 transactions of $1,000 (inc cc surcharge) on 19 March. There is a max load limit of 1k at any time and It takes about 45 minutes for a transaction to come off the virtual card, meaning you can only make 1 x 1k payment every 45min. My 5th transaction declined multiple times so I messaged /pay. They said that they were at their credit limit today and to try the next afternoon. Tried that (20 March) and it still declined. Message again and told to try on next afternoon around 3pm and that they would email me when the credit limit was reset for the day. No email arrived and the transactions still declined on the 21 March. I was trying every half hour, so there limit must get used very quickly or is very small!
I was even trying a 4am etc.

I closed the card on the 21st and are waiting for the $1k to be refunded. I feel that I am go to have to chase to get it back.

Perhaps I had a bad run, given that I was paying around the 21st of a month. But I am thinking that /pay is not worth it in its current state.

Let us know if you have more luck.
 
I had a similar experience and kept trying until I managed to spend my entire load.

I did notice that the ATO payment processing fee didn’t come through on one occasion. I’ve left enough to cover it in the card in case it came through later. Didn’t want them to chase me for a debt.

I’m sure it will get better with time esp if they increase the load limit with some ID requirements. May evolve to a RewardPay/B2B pay model. Hopefully will stay at current model.

Looks like our favourite merchant charges it like a MC credit card rather than debit card so this may be their business model when we use it with other merchants & must have negotiated a decent merchant fee for the loads by CC.
 
Thanks everyone for the feedback. I tried a three-figure transaction this morning and it went through fine. Seems like /pay is only trouble-free with small amounts and not suitable for high volume payments. I think i will keep using it for the next month to meet minimum spending on a new visa.
 
So Visa1 no go but other cards on super shelfs are fine?

Edit: Down down working well!
 
Last edited:
perhaps a new contender on the blocks? Home - Easy Bill Pay
tried registering with an amex and "card details invalid" so doesn't like amex it seems, didn't try again with visa/mc
 
the only fees mentioned anywhere was the $24.95/month after the first 3 months that I could find.
As they didnt take amex I didnt bother signing up
 

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