If you hold the popular Citi PremierMiles card in Singapore, you’ll probably recall that the bank offered a promotional deal for paying your IRAS income tax bill using the Citi PayAll service by 31st July 2020, with a 25% bonus on your regular earn rate.
The good news is that the offer has been extended by a month and is now valid for payments made until 31st August 2020.
That means you’re still able to earn 1.5 cents per mile for these transactions instead of the usual 1.2 cents per mile, a 25% bonus, reducing the cost per mile from 1.67 cents to a competitive 1.33 cents each for this year’s income tax payment.
The offer
Simple enough – just make your income tax payment to IRAS between now and 31st August 2020 using your Citi PremierMiles Visa or Mastercard via PayAll and you’ll automatically earn a bonus 0.3 miles per dollar over and above your regular earn rate for the transaction.
Citi PayAll transactions have a 2% processing fee, so this works out as a way to ‘buy’ miles for 1.33 cents each. For example:
- Tax bill: S$10,000
- Citi PayAll Fee: S$200
- Miles earned: 15,000 (10,000 x 1.5)
- Cost per mile: 1.33 cents (200/15,000)
Citi does not request a copy of your IRAS Notice of Assessment when paying taxes through PayAll, however they do reserve the right to request a copy later.
Note that the Citi PayAll function on the Citi app does not reflect the increased miles rate when using Citi PremierMiles cards (it still shows 12,000 miles for the above S$10,000 income tax example), so you’ll have to trust that the higher earn rate will be honoured.
This offer even beats using a Citi Prestige card through PayAll for an income tax bill (1.54 cents per mile), though you can currently get a slightly better rate with the Prestige card (1.32 cents per mile) using ipaymy or CardUp this month.
Don’t overpay your taxes
A little warning from Citi here not to deliberately overpay your IRAS taxes using this service:
“An Eligible Cardmember should not overpay his taxes via Citi PayAll. Where Citi has determined in its discretion exercised reasonably that an Eligible Cardmember’s payment(s) to IRAS exceed the amount of taxes which such Eligible Cardmember is required to pay to IRAS, Citi shall be entitled to claw back any Miles credited to such Eligible Cardmember’s Eligible Card account in connection with any amount so overpaid to IRAS using Citi PayAll. In such an event, Citi will refund the relevant portion of the Citi PayAll service fee in respect of such overpaid amount.”
A full list of the terms and conditions for this offer can be found here.
Citi Miles are very flexible
Even if 1.33 cents per mile comes out a little on top of what you could achieve paying your income tax through another card (see our full breakdown), don’t forget how flexible Citi Miles are compared with some other credit card points.
You can transfer your Citi miles into 11 different frequent flyer programmes and on the hotel side into IHG points.
| Citi Miles credit to the following loyalty schemes: | ||
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As you can see from the table above, Citi gives you a wide range of flight redemption options including oneworld and SkyTeam carriers.
That’s a great benefit to consider especially during these uncertain times due to COVID-19. Citi Miles never expire as long as you retain your card account.
For a full list of which credit card loyalty points balances transfer into which frequent flyer programmes or hotel loyalty schemes in Singapore, check out our comprehensive guide here. It also gives examples of some of the alliance and partner airline redemptions you can achieve that you might not have considered before.
Full income tax payment analysis
Before you dive in with this offer, make sure you’ve checked our full analysis of your miles earning options when making your income tax payment in 2020.
Recently both CardUp and ipaymy have extended their promotional rates and removed some card exclusions, so it’s well worth refreshing yourself on the most cost effective option if you still have an NoA to settle this year.
Summary
2020 has been the most competitive year we’ve seen for earning thousands of miles at some very reasonable rates when paying your income tax bill, starting at just 1.07 cents per mile.
This extended deal from Citi is good news if you’re expecting your IRAS NoA shortly but thought you had missed out on the promotion.
It is the cheapest way to earn miles for income tax payments using the PremierMiles cards (ipaymy / CardUp come next at 1.43 cents per mile), but be sure to act soon if you intend to take advantage as the offer expires on 31st August 2020.