Quick tip for those who use Visa gift cards to pay their taxes: OfficialPayments, one of the tax payment processors, is no longer processing any type of Visa gift cards as debit cards.
Some people like to liquidate Visa gift cards by paying taxes with them. The fee is around $2.50 per card. The issue is that you can only make two tax payments per quarter per payment processor.
To get around this problem, some people use OfficialPayments since they allow wrapping multiple Visa gift cards into one payment when calling in and making the payment over the phone. Though the $2.25 fee remains for each card separately, it pushes the amount of Visa gift cards to an unlimited amount so long as all are processed during a single phone call.
Numerous Flyertalk members report that the system now rejects all sorts of Visa gift cards as payment. Presumably, they’d be able to process as credit, but that has a much higher fee.
The issue is exclusive to OfficialPayments as of now. Other processors still accept Visa gift cards as debit; as noted, there is the two-payment limit.
[READ:Â A Complete Guide To Paying Your Federal Taxes With A Credit Card]
It’s interesting that this crops up right after Visa told Plastiq that they can’t make mortgage/rent payments, though it’s likely unrelated since the OfficialPayments issue affects debit only, presumably.
Hat tip to reader Testing
meta vgc works for me on Dec 20 for OfficialPayments.
so does VGC works with the other two processors to pay tax?
The problem remains, the system recognizes the card as debit but would not process my payment. Nice to see a thread about this here so I do not have to worry too much.
pay tax using itunes gift card
Successfully used Green Dot VGCs from Walmart to pay via Official Payments just now.
Just tried today.
One Vanilla Visa prepaid: tried twice, both failed.
US Bank MCGC: first time failed, 2nd time success.
Using Official Payments for 2017 estimated income tax payment:
10-06-2017 Nebraska Department of Revenue Individual Income Tax $495.05 Walmart VCG
Greendot debit Visa
09-01-2017 Nebraska Department of Revenue Individual Income Tax $500.00 Discover IT
I can finally report that MasterCard gift cards still work at OfficialPayments. I just drained one that I got from the Giant 4X gas points promotion.
Just used a Bancorp Vanilla MCGC at OfficialPayments successfully.
Has anyone has success using a MasterCard gift card at OfficialPayments recently? Is the VGC shutdown limited to VGCs, or are MGCs affected too?
Does anyone have DP on paying tax via VGC in the last several days? Which site is still working?
I just made a Federal tax payment with a VGC using PayUSAtax.com. All indications are that Pay1040 is working for VGCs also.