Amex Business charge card – widely accepted?

[Whatsthepoint]

I have limited company for my contracting work so would be eligible for these cards with the large sign up bonuses. However, any time I see where you can use these cards, there often seems to be an additional charge for using them and I don’t believe you can use them for big VAT or Corporation tax bills. I don’t buy huge amounts of anything for my business either. So, has anyone else in my position ever made these cards work?

[memesweeper]

I run my own small business and I’ve found the Amex business cards to be useful. You should consult with your accountant, but there’s a couple of ways to use the card:

– exclusively as a business card, charging any fees as a business expense
– putting some personal spend through (Amex don’t seem to care about this) but meeting some or all of the fees yourself

If you accidentally put one or two purchases through on a business card, your accountant would probably just add this to the directors’ loan account, and not worry about who is paying the annual fee or any benefit in kind you should be paying for.

In recent years I’ve paid 100% of all my business Amex fees myself, and pocketed the benefit from the statement credit offers myself too. This avoids any question of a benefit in kind, and I make more money back on the offers than the card fees have cost me.

[Cranzle]

It’s worth noting that there is currently a super-deduction available of 130% so it would be worthwhile upgrading all your IT including mobile phones and laptops to hit the Amex spend target, claim the Amex fee and then cancel the card if you don’t want it.

[Rob]

It’s all down to the nature of your business. The real reason that Amex’s business cards have taken off is that Google and Facebook accept Amex for advertising bills, and many companies are spending tens of thousands per month on this.

[Guy Incognito]

We’ve had no issue using it pretty much everywhere (or with the odd personal spend).

Can’t use them for HMRC / VAT directly but you can use the FXIP portal to pay UK accounts (for a fee).