StanChart Beyond Card now eligible for income tax payment facility

For many years now, Standard Chartered has offered an income tax payment facility to its StanChart Visa Infinite Cardholders, which allows them to earn miles from their income tax bill.

While the rate isn’t as attractive as before (the admin fee was hiked from 1.6% to 1.9% in March 2024), it’s still a way of buying some miles at a relatively low cost. Moreover, it doesn’t actually pay IRAS on your behalf, allowing cardholders to buy additional miles through another platform like CardUp, Citi PayAll or even SC EasyBill.

With the 2025 income tax season now underway, Standard Chartered has opened the facility to the new StanChart Beyond Card. This is an exciting development for cardholders, as the Beyond has even better earn rates than the StanChart Visa Infinite. Depending on your status with the bank, you could buy miles from as little as 0.95 cents each.

Pay income taxes with the StanChart Beyond Card

StanChart Beyond Cardholders who have received their YA 2025 IRAS Notice of Assessment can now apply to use the income tax payment facility.

An admin fee of 1.9% is applicable, and cardholders will earn either 1.5 mpd or 2 mpd on the amount charged, depending on their status with Standard Chartered.

StanChart Beyond Card
💳 Tax Payment Facility @ 1.9% Fee
	1.5 mpd	2 mpd
Tier	Regular	Priority Banking & Priority Private
Cost Per Mile	1.27¢	0.95¢

This works out to a cost per mile of 1.27 cents (Regular), or 0.95 cents (Priority Banking & Priority Private).

Amounts charged to the income tax payment facility will count towards the minimum spend required for the Beyond Card’s 100,000 miles welcome bonus.

How does the income tax payment facility work?

Here’s a brief refresher on how the income tax payment facility works, using the example of a StanChart Beyond Cardholder with Priority Banking status and a S$10,000 tax bill:

1. Cardholder completes an online application form and uploads a copy of their IRAS NOA
2. S$10,190 is charged to his StanChart Beyond Card (S$10,000 tax due + S$190 admin fee @ 1.9%), for which he earns 20,000 miles (S$10,000 @ 2 mpd)
3. S$10,000 will be deposited into his designated bank account (which need not be with Standard Chartered)
4. He uses the funds to pay IRAS

Step (4) is optional. Whether or not you pay IRAS with the funds credited in step (3) is your business. You’re perfectly at liberty to keep your current GIRO payment plan, or even use another bill payment platform like Citi PayAll or CardUp to buy more miles while paying IRAS.

You are only permitted to pay your own tax bill through this facility. However, supplementary cardholders can also use the tax payment facility to pay their own taxes.

Is it worth it?

I think it’s quite hard to lose when buying miles at 0.95 cents each, so StanChart Beyond Cardholders with Priority Banking or Priority Private status should give this some serious thought. You’re already paying a S$1,635 annual fee, so you might as well take advantage of the card’s higher-than-average earn rates.

If you’re a regular customer, then 1.27 cents per mile is still a decent price, though obviously not as good.

The main catch here is that the number of miles you can buy is restricted by the size of your tax bill. Assuming an income of S$200,000 (the minimum income requirement for the Beyond) and deductions of S$40,000, your tax bill would be S$13,950. 

Based on an earn rate of 2 mpd, you could buy up to 27,900 miles. That’s not bad, but isn’t a huge number of miles in the grand scheme of things.

In case you’re waiting to see what CardUp has to offer, last year we saw a 1.99% fee for income tax payments with Mastercard, which is the equivalent of buying miles at 1.30 cents (regular) or 0.98 cents (Priority Banking, Priority Private) each.

If CardUp comes up with a fee below 1.94% this year, then it would be the cheaper option. Of course, there’s nothing stopping you from using both!

How is this different from SC EasyBill?

Standard Chartered has another payment facility called SC EasyBill, which also allows cardholders to pay income taxes with a 1.9% admin fee.

Guide: Buying miles with Standard Chartered’s SC EasyBill service

The key difference between these two is that SC EasyBill makes payment to IRAS on your behalf, while the tax payment facility does not.

Therefore, you would not be able to use SC EasyBill in conjunction with another platform like CardUp or Citi PayAll. Or rather you could, but then your tax bill would be paid off 3X as fast, which deprives you of the cashflow benefit offered by a GIRO payment plan. Moreover, you cannot overpay your tax bill, so once the outstanding balance reaches zero, any additional payments will be refunded (and miles clawed back accordingly; IRAS has had issues over the years with people overpaying their tax bills to manufacture spend, and has instructed bill payment platforms to crack down on such behaviour).

With the tax payment facility, cash is deposited into your designated bank account, and what you do with that money is up to you.

Conclusion

StanChart Beyond Cardholders can now use Standard Chartered’s income tax payment facility to pay their taxes with a 1.9% admin fee. Depending on their status with the bank, this works out to buying miles at 0.95 to 1.27 cents each, and is well worth considering.

While the number of miles you can buy is restricted by the size of your tax bill, there’s nothing stopping you from using this and also buying further miles through other payment platforms like CardUp or Citi PayAll, since the bank does not make payment on your behalf.