Credit Card Points from Refund
Because your friend isn't going to like the ~2% charge they have to pay to the credit card company on the $10,000 purchase. Credit card companies make money off of transactions. The cardholder normally doesn't pay any transaction fees (and in fact can make a profit via rewards), but the merchant has to pay a certain amount of money to the credit card company for the transaction. In this case, the apartment owners ate the charge, likely because it was easier for them to send a check than to refund the cost of the fee through the credit card company. If you started doing this a lot to take advantage of this, I would imagine they would get smart and refuse your business (it'll be pretty obvious what you're doing if you're not signing any leases). That transaction probably cost the merchant $0.50 + 3% or close to $5.  They should have refunded your credit card so they could have recouped some of the fees. (I imagine that's why big-box retailers like Home Depot always prefer to put it back on your card than give you store credit) Consider yourself lucky you made out with $0.15 this time.  (Had they refunded your card, the 1% of $150 credit would have gone against next month's reward) Once upon a time folks were buying money from the US Mint by the tens of thousands $ range and receiving credit card rewards, then depositing the money to pay it off.. They figured that out and put a stop to it.
I would like to offer a different perspective here.  The standard fee for a credit card transaction is typically on the order of 30 cents + 2.5% of the amount (the actual numbers vary, but this is the ballpark). This makes small charges frequently unprofitable for small merchants. Because of this they will often have minimum purchase requirements for credit/debit card payments. The situation changes for large retailers (think Wal-mart, Target, Safeway, Home Depot). I cannot find a citation for this right now, but large retailers are able to negotiate volume discounts from credit card companies (a guy who used to work in finance at Home Depot told me this once). Their transaction fees are MUCH lower than 30 cents + 2.5%. But you get the same reward points on your credit card/debit card regardless of where you swipe it. So my personal philosophy is: large chain - swipe away without guilt for any amount. Small merchant - use cash unless it's hundreds of dollars (and then they may give you a cash discount in that case). And make sure to carry enough cash for such situations. When I was a student, that was about $20 (enough for coffee or lunch at a small place). Some credit card rewards programs will not give you rewards for balances paid off early. I have a Capitol One Platinum card, and once paid off the full balance; both the full amount due for the recently ended billing period, and the amount that had accrued for the current billing period. I never received any reward points for the additional amount. Though this sounds like it's paying even earlier than you're talking about. Dumb Coder has already given you a link to a website that explains your rights. The only thing that remains is how to execute the return without getting more grief from the dealer. Though the legal aspects are different, I believe the principle is the same. I had a case where I had to rescind the sale of a vehicle in the US. I was within my legal rights to do so, but I knew that when I returned to the dealership they would not be pleased with my decision. I executed my plan by writing a letter announcing my intention to return the vehicle siting the relevant laws involved with a space at the bottom of the letter for the sales person to acknowledge receipt of the letter and indicate that there was no visible damage to the car when the vehicle was returned. I printed two copies of the letter, one for them to keep, and one for me to keep with the signed acknowledgement of receipt. As expected, they asked me to meet with the finance manager who told me that I wouldn't be able to return the car. I thanked him for meeting with me and told him that I would be happy to meet in court if I didn't receive a check within 7 days. (That was his obligation under the local laws that applied.) "A bona-fide company never needs your credit card details, certainly not your 3-digit-on-back-of-card #, to issue a refund.  On an older charge, they might have to work with their merchant provider.  But they should be able to do it within the credit card handling system, and in fact are required to.  Asking for details via email doesn't pass the ""sniff test"" either.  To get a credit card merchant account, a company needs to go through a security assessment process called PCI-DSS. Security gets drummed into you pretty good.  Of course they could be using one of the dumbed-down services like Square, but those services make refunds ridiculously easy.   How did you come to be corresponding on this email address?  Did they initially contact you?  Did you find it on a third party website?  Some of those are fraudulent and many others, like Yelp, it's very easy to insert false contact information for a business. Consumer forums, even moreso.  You might take another swing at finding a proper contact for the company.  Stop asking for a cheque.  That also circumvents the credit card system.  And obviously a scammer won't send a check... at least not one you'd want!  If all else fails: call your bank and tell them you want to do a chargeback on that transaction.  This is where the bank intervenes to reverse the charge.  It's rather straightforward (especially if the merchant has agreed in principle to a refund) but requires some paperwork or e-paperwork.   Don't chargeback lightly.  Don't use it casually or out of laziness or unwillingness to speak with the merchant, e.g. to cancel an order.  The bank charges the merchant a $20 or larger investigation fee, separate from the refund.  Each chargeback is also a ""strike""; too many ""strikes"" and the merchant is barred from taking credit cards. It's serious business.   As a merchant, I would never send a cheque to an angry customer.  Because if I did, they'd cash the cheque and still do a chargeback, so then I'd be out the money twice, plus the investigation fee to boot." "(I agree with the answers above; would just like to make a couple of additional points.) It's a good and simple strategy to try it out with a small amount as suggested by @JoeTaxpayer♦. It's also generally safe to assert that card issuers currently don't receive or actively look at itemized transaction details. But that does not mean they cannot in the future. Some stores utilize level 3 data processing, which tells the card issuers exactly what you bought in a transaction. An example of level 3 data being utilized to reject rewards is with Discover, which announced a 10% cashback reward for any transactions made with Apple Pay last year. It later introduced an additional term to exclude gift card purchases. And this has been verified to be effective - no more reward on gift card purchases; clawback of cashback on existing gift card transactions. As far as I know, Amex does receive and look at some level 3 data retrospectively. That does not necessarily mean they will claw back your cashback after initially rewarding the 6%. But it might show up if you ever trigger an account review, and be used as evidence of your ""abuse"" of the program (which BTW is defined rather subjectively). There has been many cases of account shutdowns because of this. Card issuers are also trying to do a better job preventing ""abuses"" by proactively setting caps on rewards (as opposed to closing those accounts afterwards and taking the rewards away altogether). Given the trend in recent years, I have to speculate that at some point the card issuers would put clear language in the terms against gift card purchase and enforce it effectively (if they haven't already). This reward game is constantly changing. It's good while it lasts. Just be prepared and don't get surprised when things go south." Usually points have different value depending on what you use it for and how much of them you convert. For many providers, if you have enough (10000+ usually) points, it is possible to convert them 1:1 (which means 1 point converted to 1 cent) to either cash or something that is almost as good as cash ($100 gift card for some popular store or $100 Amazon.com certificate, etc.). Some cards have more exotic ways of getting best value - such as transferring money to pay student loans, retirement accounts, etc. So to get the best value, I'd recommend to make a list of what you can get from your program (most types of reward are uniform - i.e., many gift cards with the same price, so the work may be less than it seems) and calculate point values of each of those. If you want to be really precise take into account that if you buy something with points, you do not earn points on that, which reduces the value a little. In general, these days it is very rare to get a card that produces more than 1% back, though some have up to 5% for certain categories of purchases. "I'll assume United States as the country; the answer may (probably does) vary somewhat if this is not correct.  Also, I preface this with the caveat that I am neither a lawyer nor an accountant.  However, this is my understanding: You must recognize the revenue at the time the credits are purchased (when money changes hands), and charge sales tax on the full amount at that time.  This is because the customer has pre-paid and purchased a service (i.e. the ""credits"", which are units of time available in the application).  This is clearly a complete transaction.  The use of the credits is irrelevant.  This is equivalent to a customer purchasing a box of widgets for future delivery; the payment is made and the widgets are available but have simply not been shipped (and therefore used).  This mirrors many online service providers (say, NetFlix) in business model.   This is different from the case in which a customer purchases a ""gift card"" or ""reloadable debit card"".  In this case, sales tax is NOT collected (because this is technically not a purchase).  Revenue is also not booked at this time.  Instead, the revenue is booked when the gift card's balance is used to pay for a good or service, and at that time the tax is collected (usually from the funds on the card).  To do otherwise would greatly complicate the tax basis (suppose the gift card is used in a different state or county, where sales tax is charged differently?  Suppose the gift card is used to purchase a tax-exempt item?)  For justification, see bankruptcy consideration of the two cases.  In the former, the customer has ""ownership"" of an asset (the credits), which cannot be taken from him (although it might be unusable).  In the latter, the holder of the debit card is technically an unsecured creditor of the company - and is last in line if the company's assets are liquidated for repayment.   Consider also the case where the cost of the ""credits"" is increased part-way through the year (say, from $10 per credit to $20 per credit) or if a discount promotion is applied (buy 5 credits, get one free).  The customer has a ""tangible"" item (one credit) which gets the same functionality regardless of price.  This would be different if instead of ""credits"" you instead maintain an ""account"" where the user deposited $1000 and was billed for usage; in this case you fall back to the ""gift card"" scenario (but usage is charged at the current rate) and revenue is booked when the usage is purchased; similarly, tax is collected on the purchase of the service.  For this model to work, the ""credit"" would likely have to be refundable, and could not expire (see gift cards, above), and must be usable on a variety of ""services"".  You may have particular responsibility in the handling of this ""deposit"" as well." I would behave exactly as I would expect it from others. If you were the one giving away too many points by accident you would be thankful if somebody notifies you about this error. You can write a letter or call them. I would not use the points (of course only not use the points which are added in error). Other options are possible but I would advise against them. It's just about fair play and the points are clearly not yours. It will be considered 'unused credit'. I have tried it yeas ago. They just report zero usage. Yeah I have credit cards now but his credit line got me jumped up from maybe a 200 to a 650 in a few months or a year or so.   My bad I figured I posted it in the wrong sub!   So if he cancels it, will this cause me to lose points? Considering the credit line is about 20K? If you ended at your second paragraph, no. It's simply a refund of your own money. Same as any time I get any cash back, whether due to a credit card reward program or price match.  But. Your 4th paragraph changes this. Yes, you owe tax, as it's clearly not your own money coming back. Even barter income is taxable.  Per the new comments appearing, this is not a case of bartering. I cited bartering as an understandable example of when there's no cash and yet, tax is owed. In this situation, value is received, and it counts as income similar to the barter situations.  Just because the value isn't in cash doesn't negate the tax due. I'd rhetorically ask how OP pays his rent/mortgage, utilities, cell phone bill, etc. The answer is simple, non-traditional income, as OP puts it, has a tax due. "It's very straightforward for an honest vendor to refund the charge, and the transaction only costs him a few pennies at most.  If you initiate a chargeback, the merchant is immediately charged an irreversible fee of about $20 simply as an administrative fee.  He'll also have to refund the charge if it's reversed.  To an honest merchant who would've happily refunded you, it's unfair and hurtful.  In any case, now that he's out-of-pocket on the administrative fee, his best bet is to fight the chargeback - since he's already paid for the privilege to fight. Also, a chargeback is a ""strike"" against the merchant.  If his chargeback rate is higher than the norm in his industry, they may raise his fees, or ban him entirely from taking Visa/MC.  For a small merchant doing a small volume, a single chargeback can have an impact on his overall chargeback rate.  The ""threshold of proof"" for a chargeback varies by patterns of fraud and the merchant's ability to recover.  If you bought something readily fungible to cash - like a gift card, casino chips, concert tickets etc., forget it.  Likewise if  you already extracted the value (last month's Netflix bill).  Credit card chargeback only withdraws a payment method.  Your bill is still due and payable. The merchant is within his rights to ""dun"" you for payment and send you to collections or court.  Most merchants don't bother, because they know it'll be a fight, an unpleasant distraction and bad for business.  But they'd be within their rights.  Working with the merchant to settle the matter is a final resolution." "Summary: The corporation pays 33.3% tax on dividends it receives and gets a tax refund at the same rate when it pays dividends out. According to http://www.kpmg.com/Ca/en/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesPublications/TaxRates/Federal-and-Provincial-Territorial-Tax-Rates-for-Income-Earned-CCPC-2015-Dec-31.pdf the corporate tax rates for 2015 are: According to page 3: The federal and provincial tax rates shown in the tables apply to investment income   earned by a CCPC, other than capital gains and dividends received from Canadian   corporations. The rates that apply to capital gains are one-half of the rates shown in   the tables. Dividends received from Canadian corporations are deductible in computing   regular Part I tax, but may be subject to Part IV tax, calculated at a rate of 33 1/3%. If I understand that correctly, this means that a Corporation in Quebec pays 46.6% on investment income other than capital gains and dividends, 23.3% on capital gains and 33.33% on dividends. I'm marking this answer as community wiki so anyone can correct these numbers if they are incorrect. UPDATE: According to http://www.pwc.com/ca/en/tax/publications/pwc-facts-figures-2014-07-en.pdf page 22 the tax rate on taxable dividends received from certain Canadian corporations is 33 1/3%. Further, this is refunded to the corporation through the ""refundable dividend tax on hand"" (RDTOH) mechanism at a rate of $1 for every $3 of taxable dividends paid. My interpretation is as follows: if the corporation receives $100 of dividends from another company, it pays $33.33 tax. If that corporation then pays out $100 of dividends at a later time, it receives a tax refund of $33.33. Meaning, the original tax gets refunded. Note the first line is for the 2015 tax year while the second link is for the 2014 tax year. The numbers might be a little different but the tax/refund process remains the same." The point of a chargeback is to force merchants to do the paperwork. Many merchants don't, and are easy targets for chargebacks, even when they have, in fact, provided the good or service. You used a tax prep service. They may have given you poor (technical) advice, but such firms are usually very good about doing the paperwork. That's why you lost. You are, somewhat hysterically, a creditor. Babies R Us owes you. As such, you have *some* sort of claim.   Now, Toys R Us is undergoing Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which means the company *isn't* going away into the dust from whence it came. At least not yet.   You should be able to either utilize the credit still at stores.   Converting to cash may depend on how you hold the credit. Is it on account with the store, or is it through gift cards or something?  You can certainly sell the gift cards. You may sell at face value or, possibly, at a discount. If you don't have gift cards, you can use the credit to purchase merchandise and then sell that to others. That will translate into inventory risk.