The Offer
The bill-payment service Plastiq is offering a low 1.75% fee when paying your federal or state taxes using a Mastercard. Amex and Visa payments have the regular 2.5% fee.
The Fine Print
- Offer valid through April 18, 2016 at 5 pm PT
Our Verdict
The best rate for paying taxes with a credit card this year is a 1.87% rate, see our Complete Guide To Paying Your Federal Taxes With A Credit Card for more info. For Mastercard payments, Plastiq is now the best rate at 1.75%, and it could be especially useful for meeting signup bonuses on cards like Barclay’s Arrival Plus or many of Citi’s cards.
Note that the Plastiq system indicates that the payment is sent via check and will take some time to get there. When I input the details of a payment to be sent today, Plastiq showed me a delivery date of March 28; don’t use this at the last moment.
Has anyone been successful in opening multiple accounts with Plastiq for FFD.
Keeps coming up 2% fee for me
Can you do MS with Platiq? If so, do you sign up with your full name and then write a check to yourself? Any help is much appreciated.
Thank You!
No, you can’t. Only to pay businesses.
anyone know if the att card treats this as an online transaction?
If you’ve got a 2% cash/travel card, you could actually make money while paying your taxes. (like the Citi DoubleCash). Not a lot of money, but free money is free money.
I am thinking doing this with newly applied for cards just signed up for.
Pay $500 get $100 or $200 and the small reward percentage.
Payments offered for other reasons may work for new cards with 12 month same as cash avoiding BT transactions.
What assurance do we have this will not be treated as a cash advance?
I agree do this early. IF they use a bill pay by bank, individual postmarks may no show on the envelope. IF multiple payments go out the same day, what is the risk of a master check and list of payments to be hand entered by the IRS mail processing room like my utility payments bill pay by my bank?
I could be interested if they do property tax payments at the local county treasurer level where time is on my side.
I had a web chat with this site:
They started in Canada about three years ago and expanded to the states about two years ago.
The checks come from our processor in Georgia
They responded no cash advance problems with US payments
…… only cross border to Canada with VISA
I asked if I need a promo code and the agent answered.
that will be good for taxes on this link using MC for payments
https://www.plastiq.com/c/us-taxes?utm_source=promotion&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=UStaxes&utm_term=UScustomers&utm_content=UStaxes
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Looking the site link over, I find it interesting the linked page gives some interesting choices for state payments. YMMV by state as to what options are offered.
Thanks for doing the research. That’s good info. I was also wondering about whether this would count as a cash advance.
Pay1040.com from your other page is mentioned on the IRS website
https://www.irs.gov/uac/Pay-Taxes-by-Credit-or-Debit-Card
Plastiq is not mentioned on the IRS page.
Plastiq has been mentioned in FatWallet making a delayed payment after the scheduled date. Late payment guarantees may be okay for some things.
It may be worth the small difference to use Pay1040.com when it comes to income taxes and timing.
To me, it is risk vs benefit
Since these are checks, are the payments not subject to frequency limits?
Right, I’d guess you can make as many payments as you want.
Checks don’t have to be there by April 18 to be timely – just have to have been mailed (if you are sending a check out yourself). I’d guess if you used Plastiq on April 18 and your credit card showed a transaction date of April 18 you’d be OK (and that is just a guess, those of you who know more, enlighten me).