MPC Hill Blast: IRS: Swipe Fees Are Too Much to Absorb
You might have missed these new regulations from the IRS. The regulations say taxpayers who pay their taxes using a credit card will also need to pay a surcharge for the swipe fees.
The IRS isn’t alone. A small but growing number of businesses across the nation have decided that they need to make credit card payers cover the fees.
The difference is that when businesses do it, they need to worry they will lose those customers to a competitor down the street. That’s why most still don’t make card payers cover the fees. Instead, the fees just quietly inflate everyone’s prices.
The IRS, of course, doesn’t have to worry about the competition. You can’t pay your taxes to anyone else.
But, even the mighty IRS can’t do anything to reduce over-inflated swipe fees. Those fees cost the average family more than $1,200 per year by making nearly everything they buy more expensive.
Credit card fees in the U.S. are about the highest anywhere in the world — seven to eight times as much as in Europe.
IRS surcharges are a sign of a system out of whack.
The credit card industry giants are so dominant and so insulated from competition that even the federal government is at their mercy — unable to negotiate fees down to a level where taxpayers can be spared from facing surcharges.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Just a little bit of normal competition would change the game and give everyone from the IRS to the corner store a chance.
COMPETITION IS BETTER FOR EVERYONE
IT'S TIME TO PASS THE CREDIT CARD COMPETITION ACT