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It’s not unusual for a tax agency to charge a “convenience fee” for the use of credit cards or even e-checks. Sometimes it’s a flat fee, other times % of the payment. One thought, if you want to make the payment via credit card because of the miles/rebates, consider purchasing a cashier’s check with your cc for the property tax payment. There will still be a fee but your bank benefits may offer free cashier checks. win-win.
Of course there are costs with handling credit payments.
But I wonder what the county pays to the handler. If there is no cost to the county and the handling company is paid ONLY by transaction fees that is a good deal. But if the county pays for the service in addition to the fees charged taxpayers for each credit card transaction that is not such a great deal for anyone other than the processor. The county could simply not accept credit card payments and save themselves some money?Any time a credit card is used, it is settled through a banking process which includes the bank issuing the credit card and the the bank of the recipient. In addition, there is a payment network such as Visa or Mastercard and may be a card processing service in the middle. Each party takes their cut. Even if they were to use Square or PayPal to process credit card transaction, there is a fee. Generally around 2.5% of the transaction amount Merchants look at these fees as a cost of doing business and accept the net payment as a tradeoff for convenience. Govt. agency fees are mandated so they do not care about catering to the customer to encourage “sales” (theire sales are mandated!) add a service fee to cover them. On a $2000 property tax bill the county is not willing to eat a $50 cc processing charge.
The county uses a third party to process credit card payments and they charge the fee. I imagine the county also pays them for their service? Why does the county need a third party to accept payments? They have less people than in the past to process payments? Or the same number of people doing less work?
Who knows, I am sure they will have a great reason why they need the third party for getting tax payments.
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