The FTC Is Investigating Intuit Over TurboTax Practices (propublica.org) 39
The Federal Trade Commission has been investigating Intuit and its marketing of TurboTax products, following ProPublica's reporting that the Silicon Valley company deceived tax filers into paying when they could have filed for free. From a report: The FTC probe, run out of the commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection, centers on whether Intuit violated the law against unfair and deceptive practices in commerce. One focus of the investigation is whether TurboTax marketing misdirected customers who were eligible to file their taxes for free into paid products. The investigation, which has been underway for more than a year, was revealed publicly in a recent Intuit filing in which the company's lawyers appealed to the commission to limit the scope of its investigation. Intuit produced half a million pages of documents in response to the FTC's first civil investigative demand -- a kind of subpoena -- last year. The request for records came after ProPublica's reporting on how Intuit used a variety of tactics to divert customers away from a free TurboTax product and toward paid versions. Under a longstanding agreement with the IRS called Free File, Intuit and other tax prep companies promised to offer free products to most Americans; in exchange, the IRS agreed not to create a free government tax filing option that would compete with the industry.
Dont tread on my Out of date Business Model (Score:5, Insightful)
This agreement to allow not have the IRS have its own online service to collect taxes just to keep the likes of Turbo Tax in business is stupd.
Turbo Tax, we built back during the days of paper filing. Where it would ask you the questions needed, and properly fill out the paperwork. Where you print it and mail it to the IRS. This made your taxes easy to read for the IRS the math was accurate, and less room for mistakes, because it could give you a little more explanation on what a particular field means.
Now with electronic filing. The IRS should directly collect the data if it so chooses. and the likes of Tubo Tax should see if they can add any additional real value add to their products. Such as Audit Protection Insurance, Finding the best deductions.... The stuff that other companies may do.
However like the old EZ forms, the IRS should have a way for people to directly file for their taxes for free. Now if you want Intute to make some money, the IRS can put a bid which Intute can apply for, to build it and maintain it for the IRS.
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https://www.irs.gov/filing/fre... [irs.gov] is their solution. I've used it this recent year with success. Used what forms I supplied with TT the prior year to make sure everything was included. Matched what TT tried saying my return was going to look like without having to pay the price for the "required" version. Screw TT.
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You think that. However there are too many stupid people who actually think that, anything controlled via a Government = Communism.
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Re:Dont tread on my Out of date Business Model (Score:5, Insightful)
The government probably should handle my Taxes to the Government.
I am not opposed to for profit companies coming in to help. To help consult and create the software for the IRS. I didn't say it had to be build by the IRS.
However it is very Communist like to have the Government keep dead business models running on life support, mostly because they just don't want to see change. Because it is tough to control change.
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In general, no. However, "paying my taxes" is one of those things that shouldn't involve "private industry." Outside some real value add (there ARE reasons to have someone else do your taxes, and software can work for many of them) there really isn't a need to have some rent seeking middleman.
Re:Dont tread on my Out of date Business Model (Score:5, Interesting)
Such as Audit Protection Insurance
I agree with everything you said, but I want to point out that "Audit Protection" is not an added value.
The way it works is you pay Intuit money for "audit protection" then, if you get audited, they hire the lowest bidding CPA in your area to act as your intermediary with the IRS.
The CPA does not work directly for Intuit. He knows he is never going to get repeat business from you. He has little incentive to do a good job. He is unlikely to be an expert in the problem you have. He agreed to take your case because he doesn't have enough "real" clients, possibly because of a poor word-of-mouth reputation in the local business community. He is probably not the CPA you would have picked.
DO NOT PAY FOR INTUIT'S AUDIT PROTECTION. It is not an outright scam, but it is pretty darn close.
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There are two reasons why that cannot happen. First, the Republicans have been screwing the IRS's budget for several years. Second, the IRS attempted to overhaul their computer systems years ago and it was cluster-f--k.
Currently, the DoD is finally getting their shit together for audit trails. It took over 10 years and there are still kinks (SAP's ERP, so you know it sucks). The IRS collecting all that information for the entire country and doing it accurately is nigh impossible, especially with people doin
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First, the Republicans have been screwing the IRS's budget for several years.
IRS budget and workforce page [irs.gov] shows declining budgets for the last decade, which suggests that both parties were involved in the shrinkage. A reasonable argument is that "increased productivity" due to more automation and fewer tax forms files as paper, ACH refunds and payments, etc, have resulted in a need for a smaller workforce in the IRS, suggesting that its budget SHOULD have decreased, but that's simply conjecture on my part.
Re: Dont tread on my Out of date Business Model (Score:2)
All ERP software sucks. What sucks more is not having it. From personal experience I would take SAP any day over nothing, or some coppled together in house database. Obviously given the choice I would pick different software than SAP for my ERP, but nothing is a worse choice.
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Is it really the "it makes paying taxes too easy" explanation? That sounds kind of clever, but most people with just W2 or other single stream income already have taxes that are pretty easy. Even with a few hundred dollars of dividends, a mortgage and a couple of other minor complications I was able to fill out the long form and supplementary worksheets by hand without any real problem -- as defined by my computed taxes due not resulting in a correction letter from the IRS.
It seems more likely that the re
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This agreement to allow not have the IRS have its own online service to collect taxes just to keep the likes of Turbo Tax in business is stupd.
Welcome to regulatory capture, where business spend money to buy congressmen to pass law to protect their business.
This is SOP for American business.
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IRS promised what??? (Score:4, Informative)
the IRS agreed not to create a free government tax filing option that would compete with the industry
Every story about the IRS is an IT project nightmare. I can't imagine this being a serious threat that they would actually be able to create their own free filing online system.
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I remember back when I was graduating from undergrad. My university hosted a Job Fair, the IRS was one of its recruiters, they actively discouraged those with Comp-Sci degrees for applying to the IRS. This was during the .COM Boom mostly as such a job wouldn't be a good career path for an up and coming Comp-Sci Major.
Government work is interesting, you are always better off getting in as a consultant for government work. Because as an employee you will not get paid close to market rate, nor will you be
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I was personal and professional friends with the person at the IRS who's team was responsible for creating the on-line forms for us to download and use.
There's a reason that the PDF* forms are 'dumb' - just fill in the blank with no calculation.
Basically Congresscritters voluntold the IRS to not do anything that might make it easier for the US taxpayers (both citizens and non-citizens) to file their taxes. This nothing new and has been going on for over 20 years.
* This is back before browsers had the capab
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Other countries have free online filing and do it just fine.
Re:IRS promised what??? (Score:5, Funny)
Other countries have free online filing and do it just fine.
Yeah, but, ‘merca. We don’t care how they do it in other countries. Those countries aren’t ‘merca. Taxes in other countries are 90% of your income and they make you see doctors who use chainsaws instead of scalpels. And that’s after making you wait 6 months for the appointment! Well no sir, that just isn’t for me. I want to choose the doctor who rips me off and I won’t wait a day longer than 5 and a half months.
As for your “free filing”, I want nothing to do with it. If you make it free to give your money to the government, pretty soon everyone is going to want to do it. Blacks, Mexicans, Black Mexicans, Gay Mexicans, Black Gay Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, they’re all going to be screaming for free taxpayin’.
It’s like I always say, if it was good enough for my daddy, and his daddy, and his daddy’s daddy, and his daddy’s daddy’s third daddy twice removed, then it’s good enough for the Black Gay Mexicans.
They can pay for their taxes like good ’mercan people or go back to Puerto Rico where they came from! That’s right, ya heard me, go on back to Africa ya damn beaners!
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I don't think the suggestion wasn't that it's impossible to do such a thing, or that the concept itself is in some way flawed—clearly, it's possible and working fine in other countries—so much as that the IRS isn't capable of pulling off such a thing, given their current track record.
I don't necessarily agree with that assessment, but I see where they're coming from. To me, that's no reason not to try. Even if it is terrible for the first few years, eventually it will improve. And it's not like
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GOP has underfunded the IRS out of habitual and dogmatic hatred of anything to do with taxes.
Re: IRS promised what??? (Score:2)
And most other countries have "pay as you go" systems that mean the vast majority of citizens don't have to file a tax return anyway.
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If GOP gave most of those tax breaks to the middle class instead of the rich, we'd almost be there.
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>>I can't imagine this being a serious threat that they would actually be able to create their own free filing online system.
Maybe they don't have to. perhaps an option is to change the model. So that an Intuit, or others can bid to become that service /for/ the IRS.
Maybe be like a Post Office where besides being the basic tax filing service, they'd sell value-adds of some type. Similar to what they do today, but in a cleaner less deceptively worded way.
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The IRS has direct data from my job, all investments, etc. They can (and in other countries do) just compute how much I owe. Then send me a letter, that I can agree with or dispute.
Think of it as game play... (Score:3)
I've been using it the past few years for my now-simple filings. You can make it fun -
Almost every single question on every page is some sort of dark pattern UI trick to get you to invoke something you pay for. It's quite a maze, and a deliciously tricky one.
They haven't caught me yet. Maybe I have the correct amount of cynicism and skepticism for this game, I seem to be able to play it at the top level.
However, yeah - they're dirty as hell, there's no way most people wouldn't slip up somewhere and invoke a charge. Even for me - it takes longer to see through all the tricks, backing up fairly often, to avoid them, and darnit - I'm GOOD at this - I started coding when the PDP-8 was kind of a new thing.
TL;DR - you can get it done free, but it's worth less than you pay, it's a lot of effort. It's only fun if you think of it the right way,
Quicken (Score:3)
When I stopped paying, they decided to force an update which permanently uses 1/3 of the screen to advertise the fact that the subscription has expired. This is software that was bought and paid for, and the subscription was only for things like autoupdate stocks etc.
That kind of behaviour alone should let them go down in flames, not be propped up by a government.
-Yo Grark
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Quicken and Intuit (Turbotax) are now separate companies.
You lie - you get caught - eventually (Score:2)
This is a no brainer for the GOVT. Turbo Tax basically said you must pay for a full version of the application to submit taxes (with a tiny "maybe not" button) when their required free version would have sufficed. In layman's terms this is fraud.
I have been using Turbo Tax (or ilk) since the 1980s when I was a wee lad in my early teens. It was great when you had federal, and state to do (I have most of my life), and do a single set of forms, and then print them out and mail in at the appropriate times.
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