Paying your taxes
The IRS gives you several different options on paying your taxes if you owe them money. If you have the money, then you can just send them a check. They also have a credit card option. Which sounds good because many of us collect credit card points, put they charge you a percentage of your payment. 2.49% to be exact. Most credit cards offer at most 1% back with an IRS payment, so if you do the math, you have a 1.49% difference that you can’t make up.
A majority of us to not even owe that much money, so it is a last option to use a credit card to pay the IRS unless you really do not have money at all. But remember to also take into consideration the interest you will have to pay on your credit card balance too. Most credit card companies charge from 15%-20% APR for the cards. If you already can’t afford the payment this credit card interest is just going to make things even worse.
You can play around with the zero percent transfers for opening a new credit card. Some companies offer zero percent for the first year. That should give you some time to make the payment.
My best advise is to increase your tax withholdings next year, so you won’t have this problem again in the future.