You don't want all these taxes and charges mixed into the price because them people are oblivious to the fact that they are being skimmed by the government and credit card company: that there is a portion of the income that isn't for the actual product or service. ("Hidden charges are bad" principle).

The issue in credit cards is that merchants are in fact required to hide the cost: they are not allowed to charge extra for credit card transactions. Likewise, they are not allowed to give a discount for cash transactions. ("Hidden charges are bad: so banks like them!")

The apartment building may in fact be breaking the merchant agreement by applying this charge. This is a good thing; vendors should fight against that hiding.

See, if rent is $1400 and you can pay exactly $1400 by any method: credit card, check or cash, then you're being ripped off if you don't use a credit card! They are pocketing the merchant fee that they would have had to pay on the credit transaction. Why would you care, it's $1400 to you either way, right? Wrong: if you use credit, you "earn" points. If you have a credit card that earns 2% of purchase prices in points, you get 28 points, and if these points can be be converted 1:1 for dollars in some way (like buying an airline ticket), that's 28 bucks! So it's like you're really paying $1372 for your rent, and getting a $28 kickback. The building coughs up a merchant fee, and some of that is kicked back to you in the form of points. Doesn't that person paying by check look like a complete sucker now, if the amount is the same for all methods of payment?

The card user is effectively getting a discounted rent, and supporting the leeching credit card company too, which gets a cut of the discount. Why should the building support that? If rent is $1400, it is not fair that someone pays only $1372, after getting a $28 kickback in points, which comes out of a $50 fee that the building has to pay. The building is robbed of operating income, which means that the rents are higher than what they should be.

Now vendors of goods like credit cards and pay the fees, and comply with the rules of hiding the fees, and not offering cash discounts. Why? Because credit cards encourage rampant consumerism. They bring in business.

The apartment building doesn't need this argument: you owe rent and that's it.

Interestingly, the IRS in the US evidently allows taxes to be paid by credit card. But there is a charge:

http://www.irs.gov/uac/Three-Ways-to-Pay-Your-Federal-Income...

The same arguments apply: without a charge, you'd be getting a tax break, analogous to the rent break. The government is not a store; it does not need to attract "customers" to pay taxes.