Quote:
Originally Posted by shut the front door
When you pay your property taxes online with a credit card, you pay a convenience FEE (not a tax, a fee) and it has been that way for many years. Last I checked, the counties are gov entities, not commercial companies. You have a choice, keep living in 1970 or pay a fee for the convenience of living in this century.
|
I don't pay property taxes online, I send a bank check in because I am cheap, and the fee which is being requested by the county is the recovery of the credit card fee which the credit card company assesses the vendor using the service, and its anywhere from 2% to 7% of the charge, depending upon various factors. The fee being recovered by the county government originates from the commercial enterprise charging a fee for using their credit card services. it is not a tax, but a service fee for the type of payment.
Convenience is never free, everyone pays for it somehow. The really funny part is people are fine paying for the fee if its bundled into the price and they can't see it. If they see it, they get all tied up in their underwear about it. .
The government can't bundle the credit card service fee into the taxes, so it must be separate to recover the cost.
I did a financial analysis once for a building installation and service company, $2B in sales 15 years ago, 2,000,000 customers and buildings across the US and canada. They were reviewing their invoice design and billing process, and there were multiple invoice formats used. Looking at 30,000 invoice sample, the invoices with line item details took longer to receive payment from customers than single line item invoices. The average different was 2 days, regardless of the invoice total, large or small, didn't matter. When trying to collect $1B in cash, to pay suppliers and personnell, payment days matter. If people saw the individual expenses they had more time to think about the bill and to complain about the cost, which was in a signed contract anyway.
We started accepting credit cards for small jobs, <$20,000, and once the credit card fees starting piling up over $1M for us to pay the credit card companies, then we had to adjust the price and start nickel and diming everyone to cover those fees. Sometimes the fees were visible other times they were not. $1.0M in extra fees for credit cards was the equivalent of 10 peoples' salary back then, the equivalent cost of convenience. . . whose said credit cards shouldn't cost more because there isn't labor.
someone has to pay for that cash back you are getting, and it isn't free from the card company.