[PDLM]

I'm not sure whether it has ever been possible to pay your tax bill with the Cathay Co-brand card, but it has certainly NEVER been possible to get miles for doing so - payments to IRD are specifically excluded from mileage/points earning.

[connecta]

Hi PDLM,

are you sure that payments to the IRD are excluded from mileage/bonus points earning? I couldn't find anything like that in my recently received agreement with them. They only exempted obvious ineligible payments were late charges, interests, casino etc., but there was no word about the exemption of IRD payments as I specifically searched for that. I would need to check the agreement again and ruin my eyes with the 'super-small' small print... or maybe better call their customer service hotline later.

I was as well very surprised by your posting, as I am getting so-called 'Cash Dollars' with my Hang Seng CC and can even settle my IRD bills online by simply charging my CC account instead of my savings accounts. The only drawback with them is that the payback value by redeeming goods is only around 0.4% for every HKD spent (even worse when redeeming travels or flights), while with the Cathay CC the payback value is around 1.8% for every HKD spent when redeeming flight tickets to Europe for example.

[PDLM]

From this page: http://www.hangseng.com/hsb/eng/per/...dex.html?idx=7

"Effective from 25 November 2005 (4:30pm), online bill payment transactions for Inland Revenue Department (including all forward payment instructions with a payment date of 26 November 2005 or later) completed using a Hang Seng Credit Card will not earn Cash Dollars."

As far as I know, all the credit card companies that offered points/miles on tax payments withdrew the offer last November/December.

Welcome to the world of Hong Kong Cartels.

[freeier]

think of how theymake money (the cc companies) and the cost etc, then u can see the reason why they not offering any incentive for tax payments.

ird is not going to pay the 1.5 or 2% charges for usage of credit card.

[Deverson]

Well. if you have a foreign credit card you will definitely earn points / miles / dollars or whatsoever if you pay you tax...
So why not simply transfer the money to the foreign account, pay the tax with the corresponding credit card and enjoy the benefits??!

Life can be so easy... :-)

[PDLM]

Do you know of a foreign credit card with which you can make HK tax payments?

And in any case, unless you have a HKD-denominated credit card you are going to lose a fair bit (probably more than the miles are worth) on the exchange rate.

[PDLM]

Originally Posted by freeier

think of how theymake money (the cc companies) and the cost etc, then u can see the reason why they not offering any incentive for tax payments.

ird is not going to pay the 1.5 or 2% charges for usage of credit card.

Well someone did for several years - I got probably 100,000 AsiaMiles for tax payments while the scheme was running (paying other people's bills as well as my own).

[freeier]

that was when they guesstimated that people wld probably rollover the large bill for a few months and they make money thru it, but as they operated they realized some people are just using it to earn the miles and the high income ones (especially someone like pdlm) are the one which plan cautiously, so they play smart and cut loss. 8)

[coolgirl]

Originally Posted by PDLM

Citibank is restructuring their CX cobrand cards... the top of the range (Platinum Select Preferred) now has no annual fee if either you spend more than HK$150,000 per year on it or you are Marco Polo Silver or higher at the renewal date. You also get free Travellers/Plaza Premium lounge access at HKIA, and even free coffee and pastry at Cafe Deco at HKIA! Plus loads of other benefits. And still 1 AsiaMile for $8 in HK and 1 for $4 overseas (and foreign currency). That has pretty much saved me from moving somewhere else next time they tried to charge me the HK$1600 annual fee on the previous Platinum card.

Hmm... I have one but never knew the benefits. I won't be able to spend that much in a year though! (or hopefully not!!!) So I guess I will terminate it next year!

[connecta]

PDLM, thanks for the info about the Hang Seng CC. Last year it was still working, so I didn't know that they already exempted IRD payments from earning 'Cash Dollars'/Asiamiles. I hope it was not because of you using it so extensively

Deverson, I agree with PDLM that the exchange rate would not make it worth to use a foreign card. But even if I would have got a foreign account denominated in HKD, then you have to consider that most CC's are charging an extra handling fee for overseas use. The Cathay CC for example is taking a whopping 1.95% to finance their double-Asiamiles offer when using it outside of HKG and Macau. As mentioned before, I calculated around 1.8% of payback value for every spent HKD when redeeming Asiamiles for flights, so I would make loss with that method.

coolgirl, that's why I wanted to use it for paying my tax bills to get the fee waiver, as I am not sure whether I will keep my Marco Polo Silver tier forever, which grants me the fee waiver as well. And who knows when the HKG cartels will be removing the fee waiver for Marco Polo Silver tier members as well to make it once again more difficult to earn Asiamiles...

---
Well, thanks to all of you for your comments! But I think that I should give up my hope to receive any Asiamiles for my tax payments this year. If I should still find something, then I will definetely post it here.