How your SME can earn points paying bills with Amex Premium Rewards

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• Mr(s) Entitled says:

  25 Nov25 November 07:12

  Would HMRC impose their own fee on the payment?

  • Ian M says:

    25 Nov25 November 07:17

    No, they would receive the payment via bank transfer.

• KBuffett says:

  25 Nov25 November 08:07

  Can one self refer themselves for one of these SME cards if one already has a Personal Amex Charge Card and still bet the bonus points?

  • Rob says:

    25 Nov25 November 08:49

    If you have a Gold/ Plat you don’t qualify for a bonus on Business Gold/Plat.

    • KBuffett says:

      25 Nov25 November 09:03

      As I already have a MR account, if I sign up for the SME card, will my personal points balance be displayed on the SME card statement leading to coffee time gossip with my nosey account people.

      • Rob says:

        25 Nov25 November 09:07

        In theory yes. For me they created a 2nd account but I am sure it was an accident.

• Nigel W says:

  25 Nov25 November 08:27

  I posted this on today’s chat thread however…

  ‘what are readers experiences/views of the Amex Corporate Cards? I tried to apply one for my Director/the company for the business charge cards but got rejected due to the ‘company turnover’ and so Amex are suggesting we go down the corporate card route.’

  Thanks!

• CathyH says:

  25 Nov25 November 09:30

  I use my BA Amex (£195 pa) to pay our office rent in central London. There are no charges so I’m raking in about 10,000 avios a month. Our landlord is Regus FYI who don’t charge to use Amex either.

  • Rob says:

    25 Nov25 November 10:12

    WeWork takes Amex too which is handy 🙂

• BLT says:

  25 Nov25 November 09:36

  I have been using Amex premium rewards since Rob first mentioned it. It works as described, but points are manually added to your MR pot 30-60 days after spend. As the fee is a tax deductible business expense, it’s a relatively inexpensive way to rack up MR points and reduces my tax liability.

  • Rob says:

    25 Nov25 November 10:10

    Thanks. I am seriously thinking of signing up myself since I can’t put the VAT and staff NI through my Miles & More card.

    • Dr C says:

      25 Nov25 November 12:00

      Do you not have a Curve metal card?

      What do you think the actual costs per point will be assuming you can write it off against tax, I assume something like 0.8p but thats just a guess?

      • BLT says:

        25 Nov25 November 12:38

        I have a curve metal card to pay PAYE and CT. I now pay suppliers, subcontractors etc via amex premium, making sure I always pay in chunks > 10K. This means the fee is 1.15%. CT is 19% so this is the minimum deduction for cost per point.
        It then depends on how you extract your income. I’m lucky to have surplus money in the business so to withdraw more via dividends is 32.5% if you pay HRT. Therefore you can further discount the cost, but it is a very individual calaculation. I view it as an equivalent to paying for personal travel via business for a 1.15% fee.
        Also, I can generate a decent number of points, without the messing about of MS. If you calculate time spent on MS, my hourly rate easily makes up for the fee as well!

        • BLT says:

          25 Nov25 November 12:44

          PS I’m not an accountant, so do your own research.

        • Jonathan says:

          25 Nov25 November 13:30

          +1 BLT. I like this service from Amex.

          I’m not sure about the long term viability of spending 1.15% but as i deposited 300k miles into Emirates and then had kids. With their hard expiry date this is a quick and easy win to top up the Emirates account.

          Curve has its uses and one more new way i discovered today… The problem with curve is the daily limit – some payments can be split over multiple days but others cant. I had a £30k vat bill last quarter and time running out to pay.

          The Amex FX website isn’t pretty but i’ve just paid 8 suppliers today quicker than what i would take me to load them into Lloyds online banking.

• George K says:

  25 Nov25 November 12:10

  Very interesting – Would a sole trader benefit from this?

  • The Savage Squirrel says:

    25 Nov25 November 13:30

    I’m a sole trader. As above, it’s finely balanced depending on you tax status and much else. In the 45% band it certainly gets significantly more attractive.
    So for me as an example, as things stand, Curve Metal + COT covers points generation off my relatively small needs more cost effectively (and means I don’t need to have an Amex MR card all the time so the ability to earn repeat sign-up bonuses there becomes a significant factor). For a bigger business that Curve couldn’t cover, or if any other part of that equation changees, then the situation might be different.

• memesweeper says:

  25 Nov25 November 12:37

  I’ve been using this service for a while now. Racked up my best ever MR balance this summer.

  I’m getting a sinking ‘too good to be true’ feeling though. Avios/MRs are tax free when incurred incidentally, eg through flying. They are not tax free if purchased by your company and then given to a member of staff as a benefit. I fear the MRs generated by this scheme might fall into the latter category.

  • BLT says:

    25 Nov25 November 12:41

    I’d disagree. How is this different from paying £575 for an Amex platinum card and then collecting MR points for the spend, and using them personally. Alll MR points are deposited in to personal MR accounts. Just my view!

    • Rob says:

      25 Nov25 November 12:54

      You are not buying MR points. You pay Amex for a service and just happen to get points in return. Points are non-taxable as a general principle of UK tax law.

      No different to staff getting points for using a corporate Amex.

      • memesweeper says:

        25 Nov25 November 16:20

        ‘No different to staff getting points for using a corporate Amex.’

        …. I guess not … the corporate ones really are business owned cards.

• Winston Clubfoot says:

  25 Nov25 November 13:15

  I’ve been delighted with this since my account manager told me about it earlier in the year. My business does a fair amount of FX payments, and in addition to those we can now use this portal for HMRC payments etc.

  Mitigates the tax liability while also collecting points at an incredible rate. What’s not to like?

  • memesweeper says:

    25 Nov25 November 16:21

    What’s not to like?
    Scheduled payments aren’t automatically batched. Expensive if you bundle >10k or >100k of business on one day and expect the lower rate.
    And the abysmal login system … and the rest of the UI for that matter…

  • Asim says:

    25 Nov25 November 20:45

    Can’t set up standing orders either. So any recurring payments need to be set up each month.

    In my case it wasn’t showing our business name as the payee at the other end. The reference we entered went in as the payee. They’re trying to sort that out though.

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