Receiving points when paying the Australian Tax Office is challenging as many points earning cards exclude government payments and even if they do work you’re forced to pay a hefty surcharge that negates any benefit.
Third-party payment processors such as Sniip and Pay.com.au have become a popular way to circumvent these exclusions but their own fees are often prohibitively expensive too.
However, thanks to a current promotion on prepaid Mastercard gift cards, it’s possible to pay the ATO using a points earning Visa, Mastercard or American Express card for zero fees or surcharges.
First, use your points earning card to buy $100 or $250 Mastercard digital gift cards on the Coles-owned GiftCards.com.au website. These gift cards normally have $5-7 purchase fees but these are currently being waived, meaning each $250 card, for example, will cost you exactly $250.
Next, use your Mastercard gift cards to pay the ATO using either the MyGov or Government EasyPay websites. You can apparently use up to five cards on each of these websites per day per reports on OzBargain.
Just enter the sixteen digit card number, expiry date and CVV and you’ll be able to pay the ATO with no fees as they treat these Mastercard gift cards as debit cards (0% surcharge as of 1 Jan 2025). The cardholder name doesn’t matter so put down anything you like.
Whilst these gift cards have long been known to support ATO payments (often called the “OzBargain way”), it’s possible they might suddenly decide to change that so don’t buy more gift cards than you’re prepared to be stuck with.
Terms and conditions
Terms and Conditions apply. No purchase Fee on $100 and $250 digital Coles Mastercard’s. Excludes $50 Coles Mastercard. Offer available from 3/9/2025 9am. Offer ends 9/9/2025 5pm. Offer only available from giftcards.com.au. Maximum order value $2,500. One order per customer per day. Can only be used for Online purchases only. Cards may take up to 24 hours to activate. Purchase fee will be deducted from total invoice cost. The Coles Mastercard® Digital Account is issued by Heritage and People’s Choice Limited trading as Heritage Bank ABN 11 087 651 125, AFSL/ACL No. 244310 pursuant to licence by Mastercard International Incorporated. Card usage is subject to the Terms and Conditions available at www.mybalancenow.com/#/cardholderAgreement. Card is not redeemable for cash. Card cannot be replaced if lost or stolen and funds remaining on card at expiry will not be refunded. No order refunds provided. Refer to the ordering gift card T&C’s. Refer to individual gift cards for T&C’s We reserve the right to cancel any or all promotions at any time if we suspect error, fraud or any other abuse of the promotion is occurring. For full terms and conditions click here
32 Responses
How do you earn the points
Buying this with your points earning credit card….
U can use your points to buy? Daym
Can these be used with paypal to purchase things?
As far as I know they still work with PayPal.
Assuming there’s also benefit if you’re trying to meet a cards min spend! 🙂
What if I have less on the card than what the outstanding balance is via the ATO?
Can I use the rest of the giftcard and pay the rest with another giftcard/other card
Yes. You nominate how much you want to pay each time so if you have a $250 card you would just enter $250.00.
Isn’t this considered a cash advance?
I’ve never heard of a purchase on this website being treated as a cash advance. On my statement it just shows up as a Coles purchase.
So I can only buy this with a credit card?
You could buy them with a debit card but there wouldn’t be any point to it.
There are some non-Australian debit cards where it could be worthwhile (especially as the ATO has a 2% fee for foreign cards) – but these would not be available to most readers of this website.
I wont need to pay the ATO until October can I horde them safely?
I bought $2500 worth and tried to pay on ATO in advance but as my tax is due in October and I haven’t received the instalment notice yet ATO said my balance owing was $0 so it wouldn’t let me put the card payments on yet. Hopefully they are safe until I can pay.
You can pay on gov easy pay using your ATO reference number (PRN)
Thanks 10 payments successful.
Actually you can also do it in ATO online directly.
1. Go to Tax > Payments > Payment
2. Click credit or debit card
3. On the right of the page, click Filter
4. Select All and then press Filter
5. Tick Income Tax 001
Then you will be able to enter an amount (i.e. $250 for these cards) and pay
This is how I tried it the first time. But as I haven’t received my quarterly instalment notice yet it says balance zero so I won’t except the payment. I’ve managed to pay it on Gov Easy Pay. Thanks for your help.
Well it worked for me and I also have a zero balance right now as I haven’t lodged yet (and it’s the first year that I will need to pay extra). I could only do 5 cards on easypay before I got blocked.
Then I was able to do another 5 on mygov as I described (at first I couldn’t find out where to enter the amount)
Can you confirm, if this a maximum purchase of $2500 over the course of the promo?
Or $2500 per day as long as its done in one transaction/order?
Great promo!
I tried to purchase second time it failed
Does this only work with the ATO or can I use it to pay my council rates?
It depends as not all rates will be paid the same way. You might like to buy a single $100 card as a test before committing to more.
Ive paid my rates and also water service with these cards in the past. Can also use for Coles & Woolworths if you shop online.
What’s the point of using them for normal shopping?
Can you add this to your iphone wallet?
No. They don’t support mobile wallets. Strangely, it was possible to add them to Google Play for a while but not any longer.
It work with the ATO on the first 3 card and my fourth one decline. Any idea?
Try the next day
Has anyone had any luck purchasing tonight? Mine keeps being rejected & says to contact customer assistance. I wonder if they’ve already oversold their quota?
Same. But I tried the next day (Thursday) at 2pm, then it worked. Tried again 10 mins ago today, it also worked fine. Maybe they were out of stock on Wed night.