Pay the ATO for zero fees with points earning Visa, Mastercard and American Express cards

Whilst there are no longer any surcharges or fees for using a credit card to pay the ATO, many cards still don’t allow you to earn points for government payments or if they do it may only be at a reduced rate.

However, thanks to a current promotion on Coles Mastercard digital gift cards there is now a way around this.

How it works is that you use your points earning card to purchase the Coles Mastercard gift cards and then you use the gift cards to pay the ATO over the phone (they no longer work on the ATO or Government EasyPay websites).

To make a payment by phone, you first need to find your payment reference number. You can locate it by signing into the ATO website and navigating to Tax > Accounts > Summary.

You can manually make each call or, alternatively, use a dial string like this to automate the process:

1300898089,,0,,,PRN#,,,,,,,AMOUNT#,,,CARDNUMBER#,,CVV#,,,EXPIRY#,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,1

• PRN: Your payment reference number
• AMOUNT: The amount you want to pay to two decimal places but without a decimal point (e.g. to pay $250.00 you would enter 25000)
• CARDNUMBER: The sixteen digit gift card number beginning with 51
• CVV: The three digit security code
• EXPIRY: The gift card expiry date in MMYY format (e.g. 1030)

The ATO Government EasyPay phone number has been included for your convenience but you are encouraged to verify this yourself.

To use the dial string, paste it into your notes, change the placeholders to your own details and then paste it into your phone app and dial. Your phone will then automatically enter the numbers at each step of the call.

Whilst this dial string works at the time of writing, it’s possible it may stop functioning properly if the ATO change their phone menu options again. Make sure the PRN read back to your is correct and record your receipt number in case of any problems.

It’s also worth remembering that either the ATO or the gift card company could stop this at any moment so if you don’t have another use for them, you may want to avoid stocking up on too many gift cards at a time.

Lastly, these digital gift cards only work online and over the phone and they don’t support mobile wallets so they’re quite useless outside of paying tax.

Terms and conditions

Terms and Conditions apply. No purchase fee on $100 and $250 digital Coles Mastercards. Excludes $50 Coles Mastercard. Offer available from 4/11/2026 9am AEDT. Offer ends 1/12/2026 5pm AEDT. 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.