Numerous airline programs offer the option to pay your ticket’s taxes and fees using miles. And recently, the Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles program has reduced the number of miles required to pay taxes.
Turkish Airlines Reduced The Mileage Required To Pay Taxes By 4X
Generally, all Miles&Smiles Classic Plus, Elite, Elite Plus cardholders and Miles&Smiles credit card holders can use their Miles to pay tax on award tickets. This has gotten better as of now as the value to pay taxes with miles got four times cheaper.
Normally, Miles&Smiles members had to pay 4,000 miles to cover every 100TRY (Turkish Lira) of tax. That has now decreased to 1,000 miles for every 100TRY.
This change comes with the following terms and conditions:
- Only Miles&Smiles Classic Plus, Elite, Elite Plus cardholders and Miles&Smiles credit card holders can take advantage of the Tax&Smiles feature.
- 1,000 Miles will cover 100 TL of tax.
- To pay tax with Miles, a Miles&Smiles member must have Miles in their account.
- The refund period for taxes is two years as of the date of ticket issue. Miles used to pay taxes will be debited immediately from a member’s account.
- If an award ticket is refunded, the Miles used to pay the tax on that ticket can be refunded.
- The Tax&Smiles feature is only valid for Turkish Airlines flights.
Is It Worth Paying Taxes With Miles?
While these changes sound interesting, unless you have a whole sum of miles that you are okay to burn, I wouldn’t recommend paying taxes using your miles, especially when it costs 1,000 miles to cover the cost of US$5.
For example, you could redeem a one-way domestic flight within the US for 7,500 miles that has a US$600 value. So this is much better than paying US$40 taxes using the same amount of miles.
Summary
Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles has reduced the number of miles required to pay for taxes on award tickets by four times. While this might sound great, given that the airline sells miles for US$30 for a block of 1,000 miles, spending 1,000 miles on US$5 tax is a waste in my opinion.
