Credit cards and ATO payments

P

pdonahue

Junior Member
Joined
Jan 31, 2014
Posts
23
Some years ago I took out a CBA business mastercard because it allowed points for paying ATO quarterly payments. For various reasons I haven't checked up on my award account until today and it looks like I have not been earning points from any of my payments but especially not my ATO payments over the last two-three years - which is all I can check up on in the CBA awards website. I currently have a total of about 85,000 points in my business mastercard account but I am unable to check when and how these points were earned. I must admit that I do use bpay to pay the ATO and this might be the issue according to the person I spoke to at the CBA awards centre. If that's the case, I'm not sure how I managed to accumulate the current balance of points as I more or less only use this card for ATO payments although there have been some direct payment uses too. It's possible I made earlier ATO payments through the ATO payment portal.

Does anyone know why bpay ATO payments should be excluded from earning points and does anyone know of a card which allows points earning on bpay ATO payments? All a bit annoyong as I have probably missed out on several 100,000 points over the years.

TIA
Peter
 
Check this out.

I use this for all Bills that normally pay zero to 0.5 point per dollar. Obviously the processing fee is tax deductable. Linked to my Qantas Amex and returns 1.25 points per dollar.

sniip.com

Pay any bill with any card earn full points - Sniip - 100,000+ users

Pay any bill with any card earn full points - personal and business. Pay ATO, superannuation, BAS, land tax, utilities, rates, rent & more.
sniip.com sniip.com
 
pdonahue said:
Does anyone know why bpay ATO payments should be excluded from earning points and does anyone know of a card which allows points earning on bpay ATO payments? All a bit annoyong as I have probably missed out on several 100,000 points over the years.
Click to expand...

BPay payments to anyone, not just the ATO, are excluded from earning on many cards.
 
Probably because the banks can't charge a fee for bpay. If I use the ATO card payment portal, there's a fee added to the payment but using bpay there isn't. I suspect the above mentioned payment apps also add a fee but please let me know if they don't.
 
Sniip charges 1.5% incl GST, but you get full points on ATO and there's no further ATO surcharge. Similarly with Yakpay, 1.32% GST inc on Visa, 0.88-1.32% on MCard. Amex surcharge too expensive using Yakpay (1.7-2.2%).
 
pdonahue said:
Does anyone know why bpay ATO payments should be excluded from earning points
Click to expand...
Because its subject to abuse by some finance controllers racking up millions of points paying taxes, and most banks have woken up and closed that off. Credit card reward points were an introduced scheme to attract consumer spending to credit cards, which obviously for most people there is an upper limit - cant spend more than they earn.

NAB pays reward points on BPAY payments but many BPAY recipients dont permit payment from credit cards.
 
My CBA Business card has a system of capping points yet it seems they still won't give award points for payments to ATO by bpay. Might have to move bank or just accept a fee will be paid via ATO portal - their charges are pretty low anyway.
 
pdonahue said:
My CBA Business card has a system of capping points yet it seems they still won't give award points for payments to ATO by bpay. Might have to move bank or just accept a fee will be paid via ATO portal - their charges are pretty low anyway.
Click to expand...
No credit card gives points. Use third party payers such as Amex/Sniip or Yakpay/Visa or MCard and you'll get full points.
 
Ok so now I have to work out whether the ATO card processing fee (0.77% for m/card/Visa) is worth the award points. If I am paying a tax bill of $25k this works out to a fee of ~ $190. My $25k spend would yield 25k award points which can be converted to 12.5k Velocity points. If I sign up to the CBA Qantas scheme ($30 fee and all points automatically transferred every month) I would get 10k Qantas points. Neither of these conversions seem particularly good value, any thoughts?
 
You won't get many points paying ATO directly with credit card. That's why we use Sniip or Yakpay'.
 
Last edited:
coriander said:
You won't get many points paying ATO directly with credit card. That's why we use Sniip or Yakpay'.
Click to expand...
Do these payment methods earn frequent flyer points directly or via an award scheme? What is the frequent flyer point earn rate per $ - say for Qantas and Velocity? Their fees are a bit higher than ATO direct but if the FF earn rate is significantly higher then it might be worth while. Also I didn't add that the payment fee is tax deductible, at least it is for direct ATO payments.
 
pdonahue said:
Do these payment methods earn frequent flyer points directly or via an award scheme? What is the frequent flyer point earn rate per $ - say for Qantas and Velocity? Their fees are a bit higher than ATO direct but if the FF earn rate is significantly higher then it might be worth while. Also I didn't add that the payment fee is tax deductible, at least it is for direct ATO payments.
Click to expand...
Directly on the card. You earn standard points on the payment to the processor. The GST should be fully deductible and the balance of the fee should be able to be claimed as an expense; you might need to get your accountant to 'bless' this if there is a personal component
ISTR B2bpay also offers a sprinkling of extra QF points via Qantas Business Rewards
 
pdonahue said:
Do these payment methods earn frequent flyer points directly or via an award scheme?
Click to expand...
I get the impression that you have not looked at the online information / FAQs about Yakpay and Sniip. The points earn depends on the credit card you use.
 
pdonahue said:
Do these payment methods earn frequent flyer points directly or via an award scheme? What is the frequent flyer point earn rate per $ - say for Qantas and Velocity?
Click to expand...
For example, pay a $10k bill to a biller that takes BPay (ATO or whoever, it doesn't matter). Use an Amex Explorer (for Amex Rewards), and use your phone to screenshot the BPay logo and details, click on pay and it's done in 20 seconds. It's really that simple.

The $10k plus $150 Sniip fee is instantly debited from your Amex Explorer account and the biller receives their $10k the next business day. You get the standard 2 points per $ from Amex which you can then use to redeem Krisflyer points at Amex's standard 2 points per mile, so effectively your Amex Explorer rewards you with $1 per mile (ie your $10,150 payment earns you 10,150 KF miles).

If you use Yakpay with Visa, the Yakpay fee is 1.32% inc GST and you get whatever points your credit card offers (usually less generous than Amex).

Is it worth it? Your decision. As I've posted before:

"J to EU on SQ is 116k KF miles.
"Theoretically 116k KF miles would cost a maximum of ~$1750 in (tax-deductible) AMEX surcharges at 1.5%, but overall average is much much less as many of my suppliers don't have an Amex or Visa surcharge .
Airfare is $7,000+ in real money."
 

Enhance your AFF viewing experience!!

From just $6 we'll remove all advertisements so that you can enjoy a cleaner and uninterupted viewing experience.

And you'll be supporting us so that we can continue to provide this valuable resource :)


Sample AFF with no advertisements? More..

Recent Posts

Currently Active Users

... and 18 more.
Total: 1,159 (members: 68, guests: 1,091)
Back
Top