The latest addition to the CardUp portfolio could be a nice little earner for homeowners and landlords.
What is CardUp?
We covered in full what CardUp does for you and why you should be using it in our recent article here.
Basically, it is a third party company that allows you to charge certain payments to your credit card, where the merchant would not normally accept that payment method. Examples include rent, season parking, tuition fees and income tax.
Property Tax
From yesterday, CardUp now also allows for Property Tax payments to IRAS through their online system.
Any private housing in Singapore, including HDBs, condos and landed houses are liable for taxation. The rate varies depending on the property type and occupation status. For more details visit the IRAS website.
To be clear, this only applies to landlords and homeowners, private tenants do not pay property tax.
Miles Earned
We’ll take an average owner-occupied 2-bedroom condominium with an estimated monthly rental value (by IRAS) of S$3,000:
Annual Rental Value (per IRAS) = S$36,000
Property Tax (annual) = S$1,120
CardUp Fees (2.6%) = S$29
Total Cost = S$1,149
Miles Accrued (based on Standard Chartered Visa Infinite @1.4 mpd) = 1,608
Miles Cost = 1.8 cents per mile
That’s one small step closer to the 37,500 miles you need to secure a saver redemption in the brand new suites class to Hong Kong – announced yesterday. Remember we would ‘buy’ KrisFlyer miles at 2 cents each, on the basis we redeem on average at higher rates.
One additional benefit of using CardUp to pay your property tax, is that it allows you to effectively ‘defer’ the payment up to your next credit card due date following the current billing cycle – generally up to 50 days (if you time it right).
Future CardUp Transactions
For those private tenants in Singapore, we already talked about how you can accumulate thousands of miles per year paying rent to your landlord using CardUp in our recent article. We’re also looking forward to CardUp adding options like mortgage payments to their list of accepted transactions – we’ll update you when these become available.
Sign up for CardUp here using our referral code MAINLYMILES and you’ll get S$20 credit towards your first payment.