ATO (tax office) payments by credit card

[mbeder]

Does anyone know if QCUCC is still working for ATO ? I need something to move to, now that my Woolies and HSBC cards are capped at $2500 per month

QCU works for ATO, but usage should be restricted to non-business purchases...

 

[andye]

i used a hsbc platinum rewards card (not qantas) to pay my bas recently and got 1 point per dollar. btw its unlimited not capped like the qantas program. not sure if 1 hsbc platinum rewards point is worth the 0.42% ato card payment fee though nor what you can redeem the points for? i think you can now transfer them to velocity program too. does anyone know if they excluding the ATO entirely after 1 May for the hsbc platinum rewards card too?

1 HSBC = 0.5 Velocity so it's viable without being exciting

 

[Ny770]

Do you really think QSCU cares about personal spend V business spend? Any one have any idea?

 

[mbeder]

Do you really think QSCU cares about personal spend V business spend? Any one have any idea?

I don't know how much they care or investigate, but seem to recall a recent story about ANZ Bank cancelling a customer's card after he'd racked up +/-1 MIL in points on non-personal expenses - anyone else see this story?
BTW, I've also noticed the 'no business-related expenses' clause on a new NAB Qantas Platinum that I took out last month on a 60,000pt promo.
I hypothesise that the new interchange fees will result in a clearer demarkation between personal & business cards. As a small business owner though, it's so much easier to use one's personal cards to manage expenses & cash-flow.(IMHO)

 

[cove]

Business cards tend to cost the recipient processing the payment more. Currently I don't have anything that is a "business card" but I use two cards as the work credit cards.It was an attempt to separate household debt from business debt by the banking system.
QCUcc allows me to put $10,000 a time thru to ATO instead of my full credit limit and I won't call them about this. Next day another $10,000 and so on.Others don't experience this but calling would be a mistake.

 

[Stephen65]

Calling a bank to ask about ATO spend earning points is always a mistake. You can easily test whether you get points by making a small test payment to the ATO. Ringing up the bank just puts them on alert.

 

[mulubinba]

Why would the bank care whether private or business ? Wouldn't the fee charged to the merchant be the same either way? Or do they make so little from tax office payments that it doesn't cover the cost of the points in either case but they are willing to accept the loss as long as it doesn't become too great?

 

[serfty]

Why would the bank care whether private or business ? Wouldn't the fee charged to the merchant be the same either way? Or do they make so little from tax office payments that it doesn't cover the cost of the points in either case but they are willing to accept the loss as long as it doesn't become too great?

Nah the problem is with earning large gobs of points with Taxation or other business payments (which are generally much larger than personal payments). They still make a profit over the points from the commission, but not as much (percentage wise) as their bean counters predicted.

With 'business' products, larger payments have been factored in more than with personal products.

The banks thrive on unredeemed points (known as 'breakage' and figure around 30% are expected. This needs lots of accounts having small points balances - much harder to redeem for anything worthwhile.

Having people pay large TAX bills to earn points inflates those balances, making redemptions far more likely and thus skewing the predictions and making the beans counters look silly.

Solution? Stop paying rewards on tax payments and the bean counters can go back to planning on how to spend their performance bonuses.

Yes, the banks are happy for people to earn reward points, they just prefer they were not redeemed.

 

[baggas]

The banks thrive on unredeemed points (known as 'breakage' and figure around 30% are expected. This needs lots of accounts having small points balances - much harder to redeem for anything worthwhile.

Having people pay large TAX bills to earn points inflates those balances, making redemptions far more likely and thus skewing the predictions and making the beans counters look silly.

I would have thought this situation would apply more to cards linked to the bank's own non-airline rewards programmes. Surely with cards where points are directly transferred to Qantas or other airlines, it doesn't matter to the bank if they are redeemed or not?

While I'm here, I'm just in the process of retiring my trusty old HSBC card (RIP) and waiting for my new Bankwest World Mastercard to arrive. Can anyone give a recent confirmation that this card is still working well 1:1 for ATO payments? And does it work fine to preload the card? (I saw somewhere in this or another thread that someone had problems preloading it).

 

[cove]

I think the fault lies with the ATO. They really need to stop sending out large bills to us.
Breakage applies to forgotten points/miles and to Australian gift cards as well.

 

[cove]

Yes baggas both Platinum (Capped) and World (Uncapped) are working in March.

 

[baggas]

Cheers mate. I had an old BWA lite mastercard lying around unused. Went into the branch and was able to easily leverage that up into a World card so pretty pleased with that.

 

[serfty]

I would have thought this situation would apply more to cards linked to the bank's own non-airline rewards programmes. Surely with cards where points are directly transferred to Qantas or other airlines, it doesn't matter to the bank if they are redeemed or not? ...

yes, certainly and many of those don't seem to have an issue. QCU, WW (although the latter has monthly tiers for earn).

 

[daft009]

Wow! Just found this thread! Missing out on a gold mine here I see!

Time to get a bank West Qantas MasterCard it seems for our bas payments!
Will cancel my ANZ black and 28deg.

 

[cove]

Daft009 I hope you don't get too eager to pay the fiscal fiend. This ATO thread changed our flying lives for the better.

 

[daft009]

Just made a huge quarterly payment last week :'(

 

[cove]

Thank you daft009 for keeping the country running for some micro seconds. I did the same.

 

[PLANT]

Never get rid of 28degrees!
Good backup for Citi debt card!

 

[cove]

Yes Plant no need to cancel free cards that are useful on non ATO payments.

 

[cove]

You may be wondering what is happening to the Temporary Budget Repair Levy of 2%. It may become a less temporary tax levy sometime around May 3rd. Lucky it is only money.