Hot on the heels of ipaymy revealing its discounted fee when using your credit card for 2021 income tax payments, CardUp has joined the field with its own offer when settling this (often significant) annual expense, allowing you to earn a large stash of points or miles towards future travel.
Like ipaymy, CardUp is also allowing new and existing customers to pay their income tax at a competitive 1.75% fee, which is a 33% discount on the provider’s usual 2.6% fee when you use your credit card to settle these kind of payments.
The offer
If you schedule an income tax payment using CardUp between now and 24th August 2021, you’ll be eligible for the discounted fee using the CUTAX2021 promo code.
The offer is subject to the following terms and conditions:
- Valid for personal account users for a one-off income tax payment.
- Minimum payment S$500.
- Valid on a payment scheduled on CardUp on or before 24th August 2021. The payment due date must be on or before 27th August 2021. The payment due date is the last date on which the payment must arrive at IRAS.
- Enter the promo code CUTAX2021 during the “Schedule payment” process when setting up payment details. The 1.75% CardUp fee for the eligible payments will be reflected before you confirm and submit payment.
- The promo code may only be redeemed once per user.
- The promo code is not valid to be used:
(a) with American Express credit cards and credit cards issued outside of Singapore.
(b) on any additional fees incurred for next day payments.
(c) in conjunction with any other promotions, offers or discounts.
There is no upper cap on the tax amount paid under this promotion.
The offer is available to both new and existing CardUp personal account users. Simply use the promo code CUTAX2021 at the ‘How Much’ stage, prior to reviewing the payment.
| CUTAX2021 |  |
 |
1.75% | |
| One-time IRAS income tax payment with a Singapore-issued Visa or Mastercard. | ||||
Remember 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.
Full terms and conditions can be found here.
Note: Some of our readers have reported being targeted by email for an even better 1.7% fee for a CardUp income tax payment of S$30,000+ using a Singapore-issued Visa card, using promo code PRIORITYTAX.
What about Amex cards?
Unlike ipaymy, CardUp also allows you to pay bills using Singapore-issued American Express cards, though the fees are higher than for Visa and Mastercard – usually 2.6%.
From 1st May 2021, there’s a targeted offer for a 2.4% fee using Amex cards, with promo code AMEXTAX, limited to the first 80 users.
The offer excludes the American Express Corporate Card, American Express Singapore Airlines Business Credit Card and American Express Cards issued by DBS Bank Limited and UOB.
| AMEXTAX |  |
2.4% | ||
| One-time IRAS income tax payment with a Singapore-issued American Express card. | ||||
The offer is subject to the following terms and conditions:
- Valid for existing personal account users targeted for the campaign, for a one-off income tax payment.
- Minimum payment S$1,000.
- Valid on a payment scheduled on CardUp between 1 May 2021 and 24 August 2021, both dates inclusive. The payment due date must be on or before 27th August 2021. The payment due date is the last date on which the payment must arrive at IRAS.
- Enter the promo code AMEXTAX during the “Schedule payment” process when setting up payment details. The 2.4% CardUp fee for the eligible payments will be reflected before you confirm and submit payment.
- The promo code may only be redeemed once per user.
- The promo code is not valid to be used:
(a) with American Express credit cards not included in this campaign and credit cards issued outside of Singapore.
(b) on any additional fees incurred for next day payments.
(c) in conjunction with any other promotions, offers or discounts. - Limited to first 80 customers who use the existing user promo code.
There is no upper cap on the tax amount paid under this promotion.
Some Amex customers new to CardUp have also been targeted for a one-time 2.2% fee using promo code AMEXNEWTAX, also running from 1st May 2021 to 24th August 2021.
Full terms and conditions for both promo codes can be found here.
Cost per mile
Here’s how the all-important cost per mile looks for some popular credit cards issued in Singapore.
You can refer to the latest full list of cards awarding points and miles for CardUp payments here.
Visa and Mastercard
| Card | Miles per S$1 | Cost per mile (1.75% fee) |
 UOB Reserve |
1.6 | 1.07¢ |
 Citi ULTIMA |
1.6 | 1.07¢ |
 UOB PRVI Miles MC/Visa |
1.4 | 1.23¢ |
 Standard Chartered Visa Infinite |
1.4* | 1.23¢* |
 Citi Prestige |
1.3 | 1.32¢ |
 OCBC Voyage Visa |
1.3 | 1.32¢ |
 DBS Altitude Visa |
1.2 | 1.43¢ |
 Citi PremierMiles |
1.2 | 1.43¢ |
 OCBC 90ºN |
1.2 | 1.43¢ |
 KrisFlyer UOB |
1.2 | 1.43¢ |
* 1.4 mpd subject to a minimum spend of S$2,000 in the same statement cycle, otherwise 1 mpd. CardUp payments do count towards the minimum.
Even with one of the widely-held 1.2 mpd cards like the DBS Altitude Visa and Citi PremierMiles options, an effective cost per mile of 1.43 cents is competitive.
For those lucky enough to have 1.6 mpd earning cards, the cost per mile drops to an excellent 1.07 cents.
American Express
| Card | Miles per S$1 | Cost per mile (2.4% fee) |
 Amex KF Ascend |
1.2 | 1.95¢ |
 Amex KF Blue |
1.1 | 2.13¢ |
As you can see you’ll want to avoid using the Amex KrisFlyer co-brand cards if you can – the cost per mile is too high to guarantee good value from your miles in most cases.
How to pay
The process is straightforward, to pay your income tax bill first log on to your account then select the ‘Taxes & Stamp Duty’ icon.
You then need to enter your payment amount as per the outstanding tax balance as shown in your IRAS Statement of Account.
Remember paying through CardUp is a one-off tax payment offer, so you won’t be able to pay IRAS by monthly GIRO instalment this way.
Next you’ll have to select your tax due date. Note that specific fixed periods are used each month depending on your IRAS bill due date to allow your payment to be processed in sufficient time, as explained here.
Your payment reference number is automatically pulled from the NRIC number registered on your CardUp account. This prevents any erroneous payments to the wrong tax accounts not tied to your own NRIC.
You are also required to upload an up-to-date copy of your Statement of Account, showing your Name, NRIC, Outstanding balance and date of outstanding balance for CardUp to verify your payment.
Finally it’s the all-important PROMO CODE, where you can enter the CUTAX2021 code.
Here’s how it looks for a S$10,000 income tax payment with the CUTAX2021 code applied:
As you can see, the reduced fee of 1.75% (usually 2.6%) then applies. In the above example an income tax payment of S$10,000 now carries a fee of S$175 (1.75%) instead of S$260 (2.6%).
Standard Chartered Visa Infinite option
If you’re a Standard Chartered Visa Infinite (SCVI) cardholder, don’t forget there’s a better income tax payment option available for you.
This card still has the best deal we know of for income tax payments through the bank’s own payment facility, with a 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 redeemed sensibly.
Using your SCVI card through CardUp 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.
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 2021, so your tax liability may be in a later ‘batch’.
If your bill payment becomes due after late August 2021, we are hopeful that CardUp may extend its offer or provide an alternative deal, but as always we’ll keep you updated.
Summary
The two major credit card payment providers CardUp and ipaymy have now both revealed their 2021 income tax payment promotions, matching last year’s excellent 1.75% fee level and allowing you to generate a large sum of miles when settling this bill.
We’ll soon run our regular comprehensive analysis on which option is best for the specific cards you hold, but if your bill is falling due soon, this offer and the ipaymy one we covered yesterday will certainly both be good options for you to take advantage of.
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(Cover Photo: Shutterstock)