Hot on the heels of an income tax payment offer yesterday from CardUp, it’s now ipaymy jumping in to the mix with a market-leading deal for a 1.75% fee when using your credit card to settle one of the largest bills of the year, helping you to earn thousands of miles in the process.
That’s a 22% discount on the usual 2.25% fee levied for these payments, and even beats CardUp’s latest 1.89% offer for new customers.
The deal
If you use ipaymy to pay your income tax bill between now and 31st July 2020, you’ll be eligible for the discounted fee, subject to the following terms:
- One-time payment to IRAS only
- Charge date is on or before 31st July 2020
- One use per account
- Any Singapore-issued Visa is used; or
- Selected Singapore-issued Mastercards are used (Citi, OCBC and UOB Mastercards are not eligible – standard 2.25% fee applies)
The offer is available to both new and existing ipaymy personal account holders. Simply use the promo code TAX2020 at the ‘Payment Details’ stage.
| TAX2020 |  |
 |
1.75% | |
| One-time IRAS income tax payment with a Singapore-issued Visa or selected Mastercard. | ||||
Excluded Mastercards: Citi, OCBC, UOB
CLICK HERE to sign up to ipaymy
This is a one-time use promo code, so to maximise the value you should pay your annual tax as a single lump sum where possible.
Cost per mile
Here’s how the cost per mile looks for some popular miles-earning Visa and Mastercard credit cards issued in Singapore.
| 2020 Income tax payment Visa / MC via ipaymy |
||
| Card | Miles per S$1 | Cost per mile 1.75% fee |
 Citi ULTIMA |
1.6 | 1.07¢ |
 UOB Reserve |
1.6 | 1.07¢ |
 BOC EM |
1.5 | 1.15¢ |
 UOB PRVI Visa |
1.4 | 1.23¢ |
 SCVI |
1.4* | 1.23¢* |
 OCBC Voyage(after 1 Jun) |
1.3 | 1.32¢ |
 Citi PM Visa |
1.2 | 1.43¢ |
 DBS Altitude Visa |
1.2 | 1.43¢ |
| OCBC Voyage (until 31 May) |
1.2 | 1.43¢ |
 X Card |
1.2 | 1.43¢ |
 HSBC VI |
1.0 | 1.72¢ |
* Note: 1.4 mpd earn rate for SCVI card is subject to a minimum spend of S$2,000 in the same statement cycle as your income tax payment. The income tax payment does count towards the minimum.
Pro Tip: If you’re interested to use the OCBC Voyage Visa for your income tax payment, try to do so on or after 1st June 2020 as the card hikes its local earn rate to 1.3 mpd from that date, earning you more miles for the same fee.
How to pay
Once you’re logged on to ipaymy you’ll be presented with the Dashboard screen. To set up your income tax payment, first click the Tax icon.
You’ll then be invited to enter the details for your tax bill. These should match your IRAS Notice of Assessment (NoA), which you’ll also have to upload as a PDF or scanned copy.
At the Payment Details screen, you’ll select which saved credit card you wish to use on the left panel, then the regular ipaymy fee of 2.25% will be displayed.
Here’s where you’ll enter the TAX2020 promo code.
Once applied, you should see the fee drop from 2.25% to 1.75%. In the following example an income tax payment of S$10,000 now carries a fee of S$175 (1.75%) instead of S$225 (2.25%).
Make sure you schedule the payment at least 4 days before the due date of your tax bill with IRAS to ensure the funds are transferred in time.
What about American Express?
This offer is not valid for payment by American Express, so we would recommend using one of the supported cards to make your payment in order to take advantage of the low fee, or take a look at CardUp’s 2.4% fee for income tax payment using American Express cards.
How does it compare?
This deal comes in significantly better than CardUp’s latest promotion – offering a 1.89% fee for income tax payments if you’re a new customer or a 1.99% fee if you’re an existing customer.
Importantly though, CardUp is supporting some cards not eligible for ipaymy’s 1.75% offer. These are:
- UOB PRVI Miles Mastercard
- KrisFlyer UOB
- OCBC 90°N
On the flip side ipaymy is supporting some cards not eligible for CardUp’s offer. These are:
- Citi PremierMiles Visa (yes, most people still have one)
- Citi Ultima
- Standard Chartered Visa Infinite
- Standard Chartered X Card
Standard Chartered Visa Infinite
The Standard Chartered Visa Infinite card (SCVI) card still has the best deal we know of through the bank’s own payment facility, with an income tax payment processing fee of 1.6%, earning 1.4 KrisFlyer miles per S$1 spent, assuming you have at least S$2,000 of total spend on the card in the same statement month (including the tax payment itself), which is a condition of the higher earning rate.
For example, if you have a S$10,000 tax bill the fee would be S$160, with 14,000 miles awarded. That means paying 1.14 cents per KrisFlyer mile, which is a great deal as we value them at 1.9 cents each if used sensibly.
Using your SCVI card through ipaymy at a 1.75% fee results in a slightly higher cost per mile of 1.23 cents, so the bank’s own deal is still best in this case.
Better still, like with many banks Standard Chartered don’t pay IRAS directly, but instead they will credit the tax payment to your bank account in order for you to pay IRAS yourself. They simply charge the amount (plus the service fee) to your credit card.
That means you can pay your income tax by interest-free GIRO each month if you wish, and use the money Standard Chartered pay you simply to settle your credit card bill.
Citi PayAll
If you have a Citi PremierMiles card, it’s almost certainly still a ‘Visa version’. The bank has only been issuing the product as a Mastercard for a month or so, and will allow existing cardholders to keep their Visa versions until expiry (mine expires in 2024!).
That means you’ll probably be able to use the Citi PremierMiles (Visa) for this offer, unlike with CardUp whose offer excludes all Citi cards.
A cost per mile of 1.43 cents each is far better than you’ll get through Citi paying a 2% fee (1.67 cents per mile).
Not received your IRAS NoA yet?
Don’t worry if you haven’t received your bill yet and/or don’t have a ‘Notice of Assessment’ date showing at the online IRAS portal. NOAs are sent out between now and September 2020, so your tax liability may be in a later ‘batch’.
If your bill payment becomes due after late July 2020, we are hopeful that ipaymy may extend its offer or provide an alternative.
Summary
This is the most competitive income tax payment offer we’ve seen from the card payments industry over the last few years – paying your IRAS income tax bill in one lump sum for a 1.75% fee is likely ‘as good as it gets’ in terms of acquiring a large volume of miles at a very reasonable rate.
This even beats the new promotion from CardUp (1.89% for new users, 1.99% for existing users), though not all Mastercards are supported under the ipaymy offer and instead get the usual 2.25% rate, so it depends which card you wish to use for your income tax payment.
If you have a Citi PremierMiles Visa (note recently issued cards are Mastercard, but most of you will still have a Visa), or a Citi ULTIMA card then this deal comes in even better than the bank’s own PayAll method (2% fee).
For those wishing to use a card supported by both platforms, such as the BOC Elite Miles Mastercard, the choice is simple – ipaymy now has the superior deal.
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