Pay HMRC and suppliers by card: fees, Bill Pay and what HMRC accepts

What HMRC accepts

HMRC accepts corporate credit cards and corporate debit cards for most of the taxes a small business pays. gov.uk’s card payment page lists Self Assessment, employers’ PAYE and National Insurance, VAT, Corporation Tax, Stamp Duty Land Tax and several others. It does not accept personal credit cards for any of them; its wording is “You cannot pay by personal credit card.” Personal debit cards are accepted and free.

For corporate cards there is a fee. gov.uk says exactly this and no more: “There’s a fee if you pay by corporate credit card or corporate debit card. The fee is not refundable.” It does not publish the percentage on the page. Third-party sites quote figures, but they vary by card type and change, so we do not repeat them. The fee is shown inside the payment journey before you confirm, and that is the number to use. The page is at gov.uk/pay-tax-debit-credit-card.

A Capital on Tap card is a corporate credit card for this purpose: the agreement is with the company, and the card is in the company’s name. The same is true of the other business credit cards in our roundup. The one thing to be careful of is a director’s personal card, which HMRC will refuse for a credit card and which creates the bookkeeping problems in the business vs personal card guide for a debit card.

Payment date and bank transfer details

The rule that makes card payments useful near a deadline: gov.uk says HMRC “will accept your payment on the date you make it, not the date it reaches their account”, and that includes weekends and bank holidays. A card payment made on the due date is on time.

Bank transfers are the free alternative. HMRC accepts Faster Payments, CHAPS and Bacs; the Corporation Tax account details, including the Cumbernauld and Shipley sort code and account numbers and the reference format, are on gov.uk/pay-corporation-tax/bank-details, and VAT’s on gov.uk/pay-vat. Faster Payments usually arrive the same day; Bacs takes three working days, so a Bacs payment started on the due date is late. Always use the reference HMRC gives you for the specific tax and period; a wrong reference is the most common way a payment goes astray.

When paying tax on a card makes sense

There are two reasons to put a tax bill on a corporate credit card, and only one of them is usually good.

The cash-flow bridge. A card payment today is not settled until your statement’s due date, which depending on where you are in the billing cycle can be several weeks away. If a large invoice is due in from a client between the tax deadline and the card due date, the card bridges the gap at the cost of HMRC’s fee and nothing else, provided you pay the statement in full. That is a legitimate use of a credit facility, and cheaper than an overdraft excess or a late-payment penalty. The card vs loan vs overdraft guide compares the options for longer gaps.

The points. The card earns 1 point per £1, so a tax payment earns back 1% of it in points, on the reading that a payment to HMRC is an ordinary purchase (the rewards terms exclude only no points on cash withdrawals or fees). Against that, HMRC’s fee. Since gov.uk does not publish the percentage, the calculation has to be done at checkout: compare the fee shown with 1% cashback. If the fee is below 1%, you are marginally ahead; at 1% it is a wash; above 1%, paying by card costs money and the only justification left is timing. Do not pay a tax bill on a card for the points alone unless the checkout figure is clearly under 1%.

Capital on Tap Bill Pay for suppliers and HMRC

Bill Pay solves a different problem: the supplier who does not take cards. In Capital on Tap’s words, “Bill Pay is a feature that allows you to pay suppliers and bills via bank transfer directly from your Capital on Tap account, even if the recipient doesn't accept card payments.” You upload an invoice or enter the details, confirm the payee and amount, pick a date (one-off or recurring) and choose a fee option. The money goes out as a bank transfer from your credit line, and the amount sits on your card balance to be repaid with everything else. The FAQ describes the transfer as BACS; the Bill Pay agreement refers to the Faster Payments System. Either way it is a bank transfer, not a card transaction.

The fee has two options, and on the free card they cost the same net:

The net cost on the free card is 1% whichever option you choose; the 2% option simply routes 1% back to you as points, which matters only if you value points above cash (for Avios conversion, say). On Pro, the boosted rate of 1.25% on preloaded spend (and Daily Repay via Smart Repay) brings the net to net 0.75% for Pro on preloaded spend or Daily Repay; whether Pro’s fee is worth it is a separate question covered on the Pro page.

Three things Bill Pay is not. It is not a card payment, so Bill Pay payments have no chargeback rights; Capital on Tap’s FAQ says that if goods or services do not arrive “you must liaise directly with the merchant to resolve the issue” and that it can provide proof of payment but nothing more. It is not covered by the same protections as card purchases, and the Bill Pay agreement says so in terms. And it is not reversible: “once a Bill Pay payment has been authorised by you for immediate processing, it cannot be cancelled”; a payment scheduled for a future date can be changed or cancelled by contacting Capital on Tap before 4.30pm on the business day before it is due. Check the sort code, account number and reference twice.

For HMRC, Bill Pay is mechanically a bank transfer to HMRC’s published account, so it can be used for a tax bill where you want the credit line but not the card route. The fee you pay is Capital on Tap’s 1% net, in place of HMRC’s unpublished card fee. Bill Pay transactions sync to your accounting software alongside card spend, so they reconcile through the same feed.

Card vs Bill Pay: which to use when

Use the card when the payee takes cards and you want the strongest position: Visa chargeback rights if something goes wrong, points at 1 point per £1, and the interest-free period. For HMRC specifically, use the card when the checkout fee is at or below 1%, or when the cash-flow bridge is worth more than the fee. Remember that Section 75 does not apply to business cards, so “chargeback” is the network scheme, not the statutory protection.

Use Bill Pay when the payee does not take cards at all (landlords, many trade suppliers, some contractors) and you need the credit line. The net cost is a known 1% on the free card, against a bank transfer from your current account at zero. That 1% buys you the time to the statement due date and, on the 2% option, points. It does not buy you any dispute rights, so reserve it for payees you trust and invoices you have checked.

Use a plain bank transfer whenever you have the cash and the payee is not a card-taker: it is free, and for HMRC it avoids both fees. The card and Bill Pay are for timing, not for routine. If timing is a recurring problem rather than an occasional one, that is a working-capital question, and a card is an expensive way to answer it.

The interest trap

Everything above assumes you pay the statement in full. If you do not, the arithmetic reverses. Capital on Tap charges no interest on purchases if you pay the statement balance in full by the due date; carry the balance and interest accrues on it at your account’s rate. Capital on Tap advertises rates as low as 13.86% APR (variable) and does not publish a representative APR; your rate depends on your personal and business credit history and the Bank of England base rate, and many accounts will be above the advertised floor.

A tax bill is usually the largest single payment a small company makes, which makes it the worst possible thing to leave revolving. Paying only the minimum (the greater of 10% of the balance or £100) on a five-figure tax payment means months of interest that will exceed any points many times over. If you use the card for a tax bill, set the repayment option to full balance, or use Smart Repay (Smart Repay: automatic Direct Debit or Open Banking repayments, including daily), and make sure the cash to clear it will be there by the due date. The avoid interest guide covers the settings, and the fees page lists every charge that can apply if things slip.

There is also a limit question. A tax payment can be a large fraction of a modest credit limit, and the card will decline rather than go over (no over-limit fee (the card is declined instead)). Check the available credit before you rely on the card at a deadline; the credit limit page explains why limits are often smaller than expected.

Deadlines to plan around

The payment date rule helps most when you know the date. For the year ahead:

• Corporation Tax: nine months and one day after the end of the accounting period (gov.uk/pay-corporation-tax). A 31 December 2025 year end means payment by 1 October 2026.
• VAT: one calendar month and seven days after the end of the VAT period, for both the return and the payment (gov.uk/submit-vat-return). A quarter ending 30 September 2026 is due by 7 November 2026.
• PAYE and National Insurance: monthly, by the 22nd if paying electronically.
• Self Assessment (for directors and sole traders personally): paper returns by 31 October 2026; online returns and the balancing payment by 31 January 2027 (gov.uk/self-assessment-tax-returns/deadlines). Note that a personal tax bill paid on a company card is a director’s loan, not a company expense.

The Autumn Budget is on Wednesday 28 October 2026; anything that changes rates or deadlines will get a dated entry in our news section.

Worked example (illustrative numbers)

Take a Corporation Tax bill of £10,000, due in ten days, with a client invoice for more than that due in three weeks. The numbers below use Capital on Tap’s published rates and are illustrative; HMRC’s fee is left as a variable because gov.uk does not publish it.

Reading it: if the HMRC checkout shows a fee below £100 on this bill (that is, under 1%), the card is the cheapest way to bridge the three weeks and leaves you slightly ahead on points. If it shows more than £100, Bill Pay at a net £100 may be cheaper, though you give up chargeback rights you did not need for HMRC anyway. If you have the cash, the bank transfer wins outright.

And the trap, in numbers: leave the £10,000 revolving and even at Capital on Tap’s lowest advertised rate the simple interest is roughly £116 a month, more at a typical rate, which wipes out the £100 of points in the first weeks. The bridge only works if the client pays and you clear the statement. The cashback calculator will show what your wider annual spend earns; the tax bill should never be the reason you carry a balance.