Yes. Until 30 June 2027 you can pay the ATO with a credit card, and right now it costs nothing extra. The ATO accepts Visa, Mastercard and American Express through its online services and through Government EasyPay, and its own guidance says card payment fees do not apply to payments. From 1 July 2027 that stops. The ATO has confirmed you will no longer be able to use a credit card to pay it directly.
Below is what each payment method costs today, what changes and when, and what to move your tax payments to before the cut-off.
What it costs to pay the ATO, by method
| Method | Accepted now | After 30 June 2027 | Fee | Points | Approval trail |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BPAY | Yes | Yes | None | No | Depends where you pay from |
| Bank transfer (EFT) | Yes | Yes | None | No | Depends where you pay from |
| Debit card, direct to the ATO | Yes | Yes | None | No | No |
| Credit card, direct to the ATO | Yes | No | None | Reduced on many cards | No |
| Credit card via a third-party processor | Yes | Yes | Roughly 1.1% to 2.2% incl GST | Full card earn rate | No |
| Direct debit from a bank account | Yes | Yes | None | No | No |
Take a $25,000 BAS. Paid by BPAY, bank transfer, debit card or credit card direct to the ATO, the fee today is nil. Paid through pay.com.au at its published 1.00% plus GST rate, it’s $275. Paid on a business Amex through Sniip, whose published business Amex rate starts at 1.99% plus GST, it’s about $547. Both provider figures were checked on 22 October 2026 and both providers publish their own rates, so check them before you pay.
Read that table and the point is hard to miss. Until 30 June 2027, paying the ATO directly by card costs nothing, so anything you pay a processor is money you are spending to earn points.
What’s changing, and when
The ATO’s decision is a consequence of the surcharge reforms, not a separate policy.
- 1 October 2026. Surcharging ended on eftpos, Mastercard and Visa under the Reserve Bank’s retail payments review. American Express and UnionPay chose to follow. Businesses can no longer add a card surcharge, which the ACCC confirms applies to credit, debit and prepaid cards.
- Early October 2026. The ATO announced it would stop accepting credit cards after 30 November 2026. As a government agency it decided it would not be appropriate to pass credit card merchant fees on to the community, and the Commissioner put the cost of continuing at close to $200 million a year, as reported by the Guardian.
- 9 October 2026. After business groups pushed back, the federal government funded the ATO to keep taking credit cards to the end of the financial year. The ATO’s own media release now carries a note confirming the extension to 30 June 2027.
- 30 June 2027. Last day to pay the ATO with a credit card directly.
- From 1 July 2027. Credit cards work only through third-party processors, which charge a fee. Debit card, BPAY and bank transfer stay free. The ATO’s wording restricts credit cards specifically, and the Guardian’s report of the Treasurer’s announcement lists debit card and bank transfer among the methods that continue.
One detail that catches people out: if your ATO payment plan is direct-debited from a credit card, you need to change the payment method before the cut-off or the plan stops being met. The ATO has been writing to affected taxpayers directly, and you can change it through its payment plan guidance.
For context on how small the affected group is, the ATO says about 2.3% of tax payments were made by credit card in 2024-25, and more than 60% of card payments came from privately owned and wealthy groups and from public and multinational businesses.
Can you pay the ATO with Amex, and do you still get points?
You can. The ATO accepts American Express through its online services and Government EasyPay, on the same terms as Visa and Mastercard, and with no card payment fee at the moment.
Points are the part worth checking. Card issuers commonly cut or cap reward points on government payments, so an ATO payment made directly often earns less than the same amount spent with a normal supplier. Your card’s terms decide this, not the ATO’s, so read them before you assume a $50,000 tax bill is a points windfall.
That gap is the entire business model of the third-party processors. They take your card payment, then settle with the ATO by BPAY or bank transfer, so your card sees an ordinary purchase rather than a government payment and earns at its full rate. You pay their processing fee for that. Whether it’s worth it is arithmetic: compare the fee against the value you put on the points, and remember you’re paying the fee on the whole tax bill.
Paying a BAS by card
A BAS is paid the same way as any other ATO liability, so every option above applies. Two things are specific to activity statements.
First, the payment reference number. Every ATO obligation has its own PRN, and a BAS payment carries a different one from a PAYG instalment or an income tax assessment. Put the right PRN in the reference field and nothing else, or the money lands in the wrong place. If you are still working out what the quarter’s figure will be, our BAS calculator estimates the net GST and adds any PAYG instalment first.
Second, timing. Card payments made through ATO online services can take up to four business days to reach your ATO account, and the ATO itself says BPAY and its online services are the quickest ways to pay. If you are paying a BAS on its due date, a card payment is the riskiest way to do it.
Is it worth paying the ATO by card? The honest answer
Until 30 June 2027, if you have the cash and you just want the bill paid, there’s no reason to involve a card at all. BPAY and bank transfer are free, faster to land, and simpler to reconcile.
Paying by card makes sense in two cases. One is rewards, where the maths above decides it. The other is cash flow, and in our experience that’s the reason finance teams actually give.
If you were using the card for the float, read this first
A credit card buys you time. Pay a $40,000 BAS on a card with 45 days until the statement closes, and the ATO is paid on the due date while the money stays in your account for weeks. pay.com.au, one of the processors in this market, makes exactly that argument about the ban.
Budgetly doesn’t replace that. Bill Payments pay from your funded Budgetly balance, so the cash leaves when the payment is made. If the credit card was giving you working capital, the real alternatives are a third-party processor and its fee, an ATO payment plan, or a proper look at why the tax bill arrives faster than the cash does. We’d rather say that than sell you something that doesn’t solve it.
What Budgetly does fix is the other problem with ATO payments, and it’s the one nobody notices until an audit.
What to move to before 30 June 2027
ATO payments are among the largest amounts an Australian business moves each quarter, and they are usually the least controlled. The pattern we see is the same one most finance teams will recognise: the BAS gets lodged, someone logs into the bank, and a five-figure payment happens with no approval step, no budget allocation, and no record beyond a line on a statement. A $400 supplier invoice in the same business gets an approval.
Routing them through Budgetly’s Bill Payments doesn’t change how the money travels. The payment still goes out by BPAY. What changes is the record attached to it. The ATO is one of 45,000+ Australian billers reachable by BPAY from Budgetly, alongside PayID and AUD bank transfer. Set the ATO up once with its biller code, then each quarter the payment is raised against the lodged amount, routed through your normal approval workflow, coded to the right budget, and synced to Xero with everything else. The money still reaches the ATO by BPAY, which is the method the ATO recommends and the one that survives the 2027 cut-off.
Three practical moves before 30 June 2027, whether or not you use Budgetly:
- Check whether any ATO payment plan or recurring payment is linked to a credit card, and change it.
- Decide now whether a processor fee is worth paying from 1 July 2027, instead of deciding it on a due date in July.
- Set the ATO up as a BPAY biller wherever you pay your other bills, so the default path is the free one with a record attached.
If you want the individual-card side of this as well, Budgetly’s corporate cards are Visa business debit, not credit, which is a distinction worth keeping straight in a conversation about paying tax by card.
Sources and dates last checked
Every figure in this article was checked on 22 October 2026.
- ATO, Pay with our online services (QC73101): accepted card schemes, the 30 June 2027 credit card restriction, processing times.
- ATO, Other payment details (QC50297): “Card payment fees do not apply to payments”, receipts, refunds.
- ATO, Other payment options: BPAY, EFT and direct debit details.
- ATO media release, ATO to stop accepting credit cards after 30 November 2026 (QC108119), including the note that credit card payments now continue to 30 June 2027: the reasoning, the payment plan warning, and the 2.3% figure.
- ACCC, Card surcharges and the Reserve Bank’s retail payments review: the 1 October 2026 surcharge ban.
- The Guardian, 9 October 2026: the government’s funding decision, the delay to the end of the financial year, and the Commissioner’s cost figure.
- Processor rates from each provider’s own published pricing: pay.com.au and Sniip.
Dates and fees in this area have already moved once in a fortnight. If you are reading this well after October 2026, check the ATO pages above before acting on it.
