Can I Use My Credit Card To Pay HMRC Tax Bills?

If you’ve got a chunky VAT, PAYE or Self assessment tax bill you may have wondered if you can use your credit card to pay HMRC? After all, with a chunky tax bill, you could rack up thousands of points towards your next getaway! Whilst HMRC doesn’t accept any personal credit cards (from January 2018) there are several ways you can still earn points on your tax bill, including using your Amex.

How Can I Use My Credit Card To Pay HMRC?

1. Billhop
   
   The first way you can use a credit card (including an American Express card!) to pay HMRC is using Billhop. We’ve covered Billhop in detail before but basically how it works is it charges your credit card as if you were making a purchase and transfers your payment directly into the recipents bank account. Sound too good to be true? Well, there is a catch! There is a 2.95% service charge on every bill that you pay through the service. This means a £100 bill would cost you £102.95, an extra £2.95.
   
   This is clearly an expensive way to earn additional points but if you were struggling to meet the spending target for a sign-up bonus on a credit card or to reach an annual spend goal for a 2-4-1 BA Amex voucher it might make sense.
   
   Signing up is completely FREE on the Billhop website. To read more about the process of setting up an account or other examples where you may find the service useful see our article here – https://pointsuncovered.com/miscellaneous/how-to-pay-bills-using-billhop-and-gain-points-in-the-process/
   
2. Curve
   
   The second way you can use a credit card (unfortunately not an American Express card!) to pay HMRC is using Curve. With Curve you recieve a Mastercard DEBIT card which recharges each purchase you make to a linked Visa or Mastercard credit card. This allows you to earn points with locations (including HMRC) that don’t allow credit card payments. Unfortunately like our first option there is a catch! Payments to HMRC attract a 1.5% fee unless you pay £150 per year (£14.99 a month) for the Curve Metal premium version of the card. If you are a heavy spender you may find the maths still works out.
   
   There are two other benefits that you may useful…
   
   You can withdraw upto £200 a month fee free from an ATM abroad and earn points on your linked credit card. Curve pass through the MCC to your linked card so be careful they don’t charge you. More information here – https://support.imaginecurve.com/hc/en-gb/articles/115005775485-Can-I-use-Curve-at-ATMs-
   
   Purchases on weekdays abroad are FREE with no foreign exchange fee (0.5% fee on weekends.) That means your underlying card won’t have any additional fees as your purchases will be put through as GBP (Curve converts your purchase into GBP.) This can make the card a good option for trips abroad as a lot of cards have an aprox 3% FX fee.
   
   Again signing up is FREE on the Curve website. You have absolutely nothing to lose by trying it and will recieve 1% cashback on your purchases for the first 30 days. This is in addition to any cashback or points you’d earn from your linked credit card.
   
3. Topping up a FinTech Bank account
   
   There are often ways to top up your FinTech bank account (e.g. Revolut, Monese etc) with a credit card in ways that the top-up is seen as a purchase. You could then use the topped up amount to pay HMRC with your debit card. These are considered a grey area by us and if disclosed, would be quickly shut down anyway (several ways of doing this have already been ‘shut down’.) We wouldn’t recommend doing this, if you are considering doing this you would need to do your own research into it.

Conclusion

As you can see there are several ways you can still use your credit card to pay HMRC despite them not directly accepting them! Do you use one of the above methods to pay HMRC?