Multiple States Are Investigating Intuit Over TurboTax Free File Marketing (propublica.org) 36
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ProPublica: Multiple state attorneys general, including Josh Stein of North Carolina, have opened investigations of TurboTax maker Intuit, following ProPublica's reporting that the company charged millions of Americans for tax filing services they were eligible to receive for free, according to people with knowledge of the investigations. As part of the investigations, Intuit has been subpoenaed for records. At least four states besides North Carolina are investigating, but the exact number is not clear.
The company has not specifically disclosed the state investigations to shareholders. Its recent quarterly financial report contains a broad statement that, "Beginning in May 2019, various legal proceedings were filed and certain regulatory inquiries were commenced in connection with the provision and marketing of our free online tax preparation programs." It continues: "We believe that the allegations contained within the legal proceedings are without merit. We intend to vigorously defend against the legal proceedings and cooperate in the investigations." Previous ProPublica reports described how Intuit routinely charged millions of Americans who were eligible to file their taxes for free, sometimes luring them in with deceptive marketing. They also found that Intuit had even hidden its free tax-filing program, offered through a partnership with the IRS, from search engines such as Google.
The company has not specifically disclosed the state investigations to shareholders. Its recent quarterly financial report contains a broad statement that, "Beginning in May 2019, various legal proceedings were filed and certain regulatory inquiries were commenced in connection with the provision and marketing of our free online tax preparation programs." It continues: "We believe that the allegations contained within the legal proceedings are without merit. We intend to vigorously defend against the legal proceedings and cooperate in the investigations." Previous ProPublica reports described how Intuit routinely charged millions of Americans who were eligible to file their taxes for free, sometimes luring them in with deceptive marketing. They also found that Intuit had even hidden its free tax-filing program, offered through a partnership with the IRS, from search engines such as Google.
Yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
They'll admit to a "technical glitch" that has since been fixed, or policy that has since been changed, pay a fine and move on. Then the class actions will ensue, a relative pittance to gross profit will be paid and the lawyers will collect their 40% while everyone else gets a coupon for $10 off for Turbotax 2021.
They'll beef up their lobbying by adding a DC firm or two. Nothing changes in terms of free tax filing. The Congressmen will have declared victory and gotten their soundbites in and moved onto the next topic du jour.
Meanwhile, the American Corporatocracy steamrolls forward.
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Why can't the government just do it? (Score:5, Insightful)
This "free file" crap is so stupid. All the tax prep software companies lobbied the gov't to stay out of making filing your tax forms easy.
In Arizona, I can download the state tax form in PDF and it's fully fillable -- even does it's own calculations automatically so I don't have to hand execute a bunch of pseudo code gibberish, adding and subtracting line X from Y, etc.
The Federal tax forms should be able to do all that too, but NO, the "free file" coalition forced the gov't NOT to make filing taxes easy.
Since these tax prep companies are now doing the bait and switch game, I think it's high time the gov't just abandons the "free file" idea and goes ahead with making the federal tax PDF's fully automated like Arizona's. Put those tax prep companies out of business. It's just unnecessary overhead for EVERYBODY in the country to deal with, every year...
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Because Republicans as the anti-tax, pro corporate party, doesn't want it, because it would make tax filing to easy and thus to easy for taxes to be raise. So sayeth Grover Nourquist, one of the First Lords of the Republican Party. California abandoned it over this intransigence, and so did the Feds. And given who is running the Feds now, it won't happen. The IRS has been in fact so defunded tax evasion is now rampant and the IRS will NOT audit because they can't afford to go to court over it. Many in the T
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No, it ain't Republicans making tax filing difficult. Arizona is a Republican state, and AZ has the autocalculating tax form.
Intuit, one of the tax prep software companies that did lobby for difficult tax forms, is headquartered in California, land of the Democrat.
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Of course not... for you... all bad things are Republican made, even if they happen in States thoroughly dominated by Democrats
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Filing taxes is easier is red States than it is in blue states.
Source?
Re:Why can't the government just do it? (Score:4, Funny)
Or just, like in many other countries, the govt supplies a free website that you use to lodge your tax returns.
Refund (or bills) usually arrive within 10 days.
At least, that's my experience.
https://www.ato.gov.au/Individ... [ato.gov.au]
My tax return takes maybe 5 minutes to complete, sorted, refund in my bank account within a week.
It's not actually that difficult, so... what's the real issue here?
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It would be technically feasible to send every tax unit a bill with completed tax forms, ut the tax preparers have bribed all parties to keep this from happening. What is at stake at this point is huge fees for tax advances. If the tax preparers do not have a chance to interact with a person, they can’t screw them out
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They have something like that, called "Free Fillable Forms". It's basically just the standard tax forms that you fill out online, with some of the basic math done for you, and then you can e-file them. It works well enough and that's how I've been filing my taxes now for about 10 years. Though I recently did find out that behind the scenes it's run by the big tax prep companies as part of some agreement they made and not the IRS.
I wish I could do the same for state taxes. Like Arizona, I can download an
Robots.txt (Score:5, Informative)
Seems like the Free File option is getting hidden from Google by robots.txt on the Intuit Server...
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'Free File option is getting hidden from Google '
No, I doubt it. Most likely it's 1 line on a TOS or EULA that's more than 500 lines and requires the users agreement to before executing the task, but I bet it's plainly disclosed. How many times to you think JoeSixpack reads terms before agreeing to them.
Click yes to agree, click no to figure it out elsewhere. Grapes exist for those that know how to pluck. Nothing new here.
Golly Gee Willikers (Score:1)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=... [youtube.com]
They seem like a friendly bunch.
The IRS should allow filing online. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: The IRS should allow filing online. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The IRS should allow filing online. (Score:4, Interesting)
In my country Iceland the IRS allows you to file your taxes online and *everything* is prefilled and calculated automatically for you. All I have to do when I file taxes is to open up the form online, quickly glance over it and click submit without having to input anything. Takes less than 5 minutes.
IRS does have Free File (Score:5, Informative)
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'"Free File" is a big scam, lobbied for by the tax prep companies. It's typical bait and switch tactics.'
Maybe, but most likely it's because the IRSs IMF and systems were coded in assembly in the 50s and we haven't found sufficient tallent to code or an interpreter that plays nice in the modern world.
So they just subcontract the whole mess, and act like ostriches. Kinda like the national debt.
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The IRS does have a Free File section where you can fill in the information online and submit it. They have different offering for those making under and over $69,000 taxable income. https://www.irs.gov/filing/fre... [irs.gov]
Wow, who knew? Thanks for sharing that!
I"m still going to pay an online preparation company though. It's worth it to me to have last year's filing saved and handy, to import data, to have stuff auto-suggested to me.
Filing taxes is a PITA because of the complexity of the laws, not because of preparation details. And that's not going to change, because using taxes to reward constituents and punish undesired behavior is much too handy of a tool for politicians.
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Overly complex tax system (Score:2)
TurboTax is not a problem, it is the symptom of a really bad problem in US tax system. Filing for your taxes should not be rocket science and should not require special software unless you have complex investments schemes.
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Super easy to pirate (Score:2)
Because of how Turbotax is designed (easily passed around on CD by technical illiterates) it's super easy to pirate. In fact there's nothing you actually have to do. You install the normal installer and it lets you e-file to federal without doing anything special. They try to charge you to e-file state but you can print it out and mail it in for free.
Never pay for Turbotax. Just pirate it.
They can lobby all they want I will never give Intuit a penny.
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You realize, of course, that they want it easy to pirate?
And why might that be? Perhaps because the information you enter on your return is valuable in and of itself? How much do you think it's worth to Intuit to know who you are (name, address, social security number, phone number, etc), who;'s in your household (names and social security numbers of your children/spouse), how much you make (name and address of employer, job title, W-2 data), all your investments, all your deductions, etc?
You didn't thin