The unfortunate side effect of high home prices in Canada tends to be high property taxes. In the City of Vancouver, the property tax rate is about 0.26% of your assessed home value. In the City of Ottawa it is even higher, at 1.14% of your property’s assessed value. On a $800,000 home in Ottawa that’s $9120 that you would have to pay annually. Ouch indeed. One of the best ways to lessen the pain of paying your property taxes is to get a little reward or cash back from paying your property taxes.
Can You Pay Property Taxes with a Credit Card in Canada?
This post will go over whether you can pay property taxes with a credit card in Canada, how to pay your property taxes online, and how to pay your property taxes with a credit card without having to pay for a credit card convenience fee.
Technically you can pay property taxes with a credit card in Canada but it has to be a specific credit card.
How to Pay Property Taxes Online
Technically at least for the City of Vancouver property taxes, you cannot pay your property taxes with a credit card- take for example this message below from the City of Vancouver property taxes website on ways to pay your property taxes.
However, you can with a specific credit card.
What credit card is it?
Why, the one and only Canadian Tire World Elite Mastercard.
First, you log in to the Canadian Tire Banking website.
Then you look at the top header bar, and click on “Payments”
Click on “Manage Payees” and then click on “Add a Payee”
Here are some of the cities that have property tax payments through this credit card.
- Abbotsford
- City of Burnaby
- Calgary
- Colwood City Property taxes
- Delta
- Duncan
- Ottawa
- Parksville
- Prince Rupert
- Regina
- Whistler
- Saskatoon
- Squamish
- Surrey
- Thunder Bay
- City of Toronto
- Vancouver
- Windsor
- Winnipeg
After you find your municipality on the list of payees, you click on it and input your account number (this can be found on your property tax bill).
Then you can schedule your payment according to the property taxes due date. I usually make sure that I pay off the bill very quickly (within a few days of the transaction posting) because otherwise your credit score might be affected negatively due to the high credit utilization.
The property tax bill likely will take up a lot of your credit card limit.
This credit card has zero annual fee. You can also collect some cash back for paying your property taxes.
Not only does this credit card have a zero annual fee but you can collect Canadian Tire money from it.
It’s only 1% back in Canadian Tire money, but it’s better than nothing. $8000 in annual property taxes can still get you $80 cash back to use at Canadian Tire. You could get a ladder or a fancy snow shovel (or two).
Another Bonus of the Canadian Tire World Elite Triangle Mastercard is free roadside assistance in Canada. This will save you some money from your CAA Membership.
Finally, the Canadian Tire World Elite Mastercard has a 3% cash back rate on grocery store purchases (excluding Walmart and Costco) which is an excellent rate for your grocery purchases.
In my opinion, it’s one of the best zero dollar annual fee credit cards available in Canada.
Utilities, Tuition are Acceptable Payees Too
In addition to being able to pay property taxes in select cities, you can also pay your utility payments like BC Hydro or Fortis bill payments for natural gas.
Normally, when you pay with a credit card to utility companies, they charge you a credit card convenience fee.
For example, from the Fortis website, here are the options if you pay by credit card.
They use a third party credit card payment service called KUBRA EZ-PAY, and the convenience fee charge is 1.75%. If you use a Visa debit card (basically a bank card that you can use where Visa is accepted) the convenience fee is 0.75%.
However, with this card, you just look for the utility company under the payee name and add it to your payee list.
Furthermore, you can pay tuition using this credit card if you label the post secondary institution as a payee. Here are some of the universities that are included as payees for this credit card.
Obviously it would be difficult fo a student to be approved for this credit card given the higher income that it requires, but if you are a parent organizing payments for your child’s tuition, this is a great way to save some money for dorm room decor with the cash back.
Canada Revenue Agency is not a Payee
One downside is that Canada Revenue Agency is not a payee. You can’t use your Triangle credit card to pay your income tax instalments or your GST/HST payments.
For that there are the conventional options such as Plastiq or PaySimply. They add a convenience charge as well when you pay by credit card. This is even larger at around 2.45%.
Paying Your Property Taxes with a Credit card
Hope you found this post useful on how to pay your property taxes with a credit card.
I believe both the Canadian Tire Financial credit cards have this capability to pay your property taxes with a credit card and are both zero annual fee, but the:
- Canadian Tire Triangle Mastercard gives you 0.5% cash back (no minimum annual income requirement)
- Canadian Tire Triangle World Elite Mastercard gives you 1% cash back but the annual minimum income requirement is $80,000 annually.
To my knowledge these are the only credit cards that can be used to pay your property taxes, utilities, and tuition payments in Canada without being added a convenience charge. If you know of any other cards that allow you to collect points on your property taxes, please share in the comments below.
Have you tried paying your property taxes with a credit card before?
GYM is a 30 something millennial interested in achieving financial freedom through disciplined saving, dividend and ETF investing, and living a minimalist lifestyle. Before you go, check out my recommendations page of financial tools I use to save and invest money. Don’t forget to subscribe for blog updates, a free dividend yield spreadsheet, and the free Young Money Bootcamp eCourse.
Thanks GYM for sharing the tips. Knowing whether the city and/or the university is on the list of payees is key. Is there any other way to know the payee list other than bugging a friend who is currently a card holder?
@Ye- If you want you can contact me via the contact form and I can look it up for you if you don’t have a friend who is currently a card holder 🙂
Really good tip. I always wanted to pay my property tax with a credit card. Time to earn some sweet, sweet Canadian Tire money :P.
@AnotherLoonie- As Oprah would say, You get a snow shovel, you get a snow shovel, you get a snow shovel!