TurboTax and H&R Block Want 'Permission to Blab Your Money Secrets' (yahoo.com) 29
Americans filing their taxes could face privacy threats, reports the Washington Post:
"We just need your OK on a couple of things," TurboTax says as you prepare your tax return.
Alarm bells should be ringing in your head at the innocuous tone.
This is where America's most popular tax-prep website asks you to sign away the ironclad privacy protections of your tax return, including the details of your income, home mortgage and student loan payments. With your permission to blab your money secrets, the company earns extra income from showing you advertisements for the next three years for things like credit cards and mortgage offers targeted to your financial situation.
You have the legal right to say no when TurboTax asks for your permission to "share your data" or use your tax information to "improve your experience...."
The article complains that granting permission allows TurboTax to share details with "sibling" companies "such as your salary, the amount of your tax refund, whether you received a tax break for student loans and the day you printed your tax return..."
"You'll see that permission request once near the beginning of the tax prep process. If you skip it then, you'll see the same screen again near the end. You'll have to say yes or no..." This is part of the corporate arms race for your personal data. Everyone including the grocery store, your apps and the manufacturer of your car are gobbling information to profit from details of your life. With TurboTax, though, you have the power to refuse to participate...
TurboTax and the online tax prep service from H&R Block have been asking every year to blab your tax return. We've cautioned you about it for each of the past two tax filing seasons. (I focused only on TurboTax this year.)
Alarm bells should be ringing in your head at the innocuous tone.
This is where America's most popular tax-prep website asks you to sign away the ironclad privacy protections of your tax return, including the details of your income, home mortgage and student loan payments. With your permission to blab your money secrets, the company earns extra income from showing you advertisements for the next three years for things like credit cards and mortgage offers targeted to your financial situation.
You have the legal right to say no when TurboTax asks for your permission to "share your data" or use your tax information to "improve your experience...."
The article complains that granting permission allows TurboTax to share details with "sibling" companies "such as your salary, the amount of your tax refund, whether you received a tax break for student loans and the day you printed your tax return..."
"You'll see that permission request once near the beginning of the tax prep process. If you skip it then, you'll see the same screen again near the end. You'll have to say yes or no..." This is part of the corporate arms race for your personal data. Everyone including the grocery store, your apps and the manufacturer of your car are gobbling information to profit from details of your life. With TurboTax, though, you have the power to refuse to participate...
TurboTax and the online tax prep service from H&R Block have been asking every year to blab your tax return. We've cautioned you about it for each of the past two tax filing seasons. (I focused only on TurboTax this year.)
Well you say that, but ... (Score:4, Insightful)
to improve your experience
Funny how companies always say that, but it never seems to.
Re: Well you say that, but ... (Score:3)
Re: Well you say that, but ... (Score:4, Insightful)
When they say "to improve your experience" - they are Specifically talking about Better-Targeted Advertising efforts Emailed to you, or Mailed to you, Or telemarketed to you over the phone through Telephone soliciters, Etc.
Re: Well you say that, but ... (Score:2)
Re: Well you say that, but ... (Score:4, Informative)
If they can provide the service without sharing your data, it is exceedingly rare that allowing them to do so actually improves it.
For you at least.
I almost always use fake information, wherever possible at least (obviously not possible with TurboTax), and I cannot remember a time when doing so has degraded my experience,
Re: Well you say that, but ... (Score:2)
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Hundreds? Naw. If the info. was being used only to provide service they would Identity the details in their privacy policy.
They DONT have to ask your permission to use the data you furnish them to provide you the service directly.
To Ask for approval means they're using the Info. for something you may disagree with and need the extra CYA.
The extra consent 99% of the time is to use the data for Marketing purposes, Or distribute the data to a 3rd party Who is contractually allowed to keep the personal info.
Re: Well you say that, but ... (Score:4, Insightful)
And this is how we lose our humanity and become tools of the shareholders to accrue wealth. They force it on us, and we come to accept it.
It might seem like a little thing, but they absolutely will use it as cover for more. And that's if you trust them, which you absolutely shouldn't.
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... and we come to accept it
Give me convenience, or give me death
Re: Well you say that, but ... (Score:5, Informative)
It's a bit more insidious than that. In the EULA for TurboTax:
You understand that by using certain Services, you are providing written instructions in accordance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act and other applicable law to permit Intuit Inc. and its affiliated companies to obtain and periodically refresh your credit information and other information about you from third parties for marketing, eligibility, and other purposes described in Intuit's Global Privacy Statement . You understand that your instructions authorize Intuit and its affiliated companies to obtain such information now and periodically in the future for as long as you have a registered Intuit account. We will stop refreshing your credit information when you cancel your account through your account settings. https://turbotax.intuit.com/co... [intuit.com]
(emphasis added by me for clarity)
So having an Intuit account gives them permission to pull your credit rating for marketing purposes for as long as you have an account. This wasn't a problem before this year as you could use TurboTax without creating a registered Intuit account.
Starting this year, to use TurboTax you must create an Intuit account in order to register and activate the software. Intuit claims this is to combat piracy of the software but it surely benefits them to require every copy sold will now have an Intuit account. They could have done the activation with multiple other methods to make sure multiple people were not using the software without paying, but I was disappointed they require allowing credit report authorization to use their software.
Intuit lost a little of my faith when about 2018 they started removing features from the Deluxe edition and required you to purchase the Premier edition to do things like Capital gains, Schedule D, etc. There was such a backlash from customers that they added them back into the desktop version but not the online version. Every time you get to an edge case (rental homes, AirBnB rentals, Farming income, etc) they won't show you the forms unless you upgrade to a pricier version.
For the past 20 years I have used TurboTax and been happy with it. This year they went a step too far and I will be choosing a different tax software package.
Re: Well you say that, but ... (Score:2)
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For the last - I don't even know how long - I've been using H&R Block's tax software. The 2018 incident was not the first time the Turbo Tax folks have tried to screw their customers. But it cemented my belief that the makers of Turbo Tax just bide their time until the next time they try to screw over the customers that keep them in business.
On the earlier than 2018 occasion I left Turbo Tax and never looked back. 2018 just affirmed my good judgement in not giving those "people" another chance at scr
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Improving my experience with regard to software would entail:
- lower purchase cost and lower cost of ownership
- less defects
- less frequent updates (ship finished code)
I'm pretty sure I'll never see any of these from TurboTax and H&R Block.
Sasan K. Goodarzi (Score:1)
Venmo anyone (Score:1)
TurboTax is a pointless waste of time (Score:3)
Stopped using TurboTax several ago. It was taking way too long to enter a few pieces of information that I needed to. Between the let us sell your data requests, constant repeated upselling and the cartoonish infinite jackpot scrolling thru scenarios it simply was not worth the aggravation. Even after filing it was pulling teeth to find that one simple arcane trick to "unlock" the ability to actually download the full returns.
People are spending money for convince and TurboTax does everything possible to fuck with their paying customers. I just don't understand it.
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If your taxes are simple, it makes sense to avoid software. If you have any complexities to deal with, it gets complicated really fast, trying to do it
I can't speak for TurboTax, because I use H&R Block. There, getting your full returns is just a "print" option, which you can then "print to PDF."
There's a reason I still file by paper (Score:2)
I'm considering direct e-file with the IRS, but until then, my filed-on-paper tax forms are between me, the IRS, and the courier.
Obligatory: Yes, I know my tax data lives on IRS computers and IRS computers aren't immune from hostile attacks or insider leaks, but at least they aren't pulling stunts like TT and Block.
Good time to point out IRS Direct File (Score:4, Interesting)
The IRS recently started a testing program called Direct File [irs.gov] that allows Americans that live in the States that are participating in the program to file their taxes electronically for free. There is no income maximum, however since this is only a test program, only very simple taxes can be filed via the program. Anyone can check the website for all of the details.
It's hard to state how amazing that we are getting even this from the IRS. Intuit and H&R Block have been fighting and lobbying millions upon millions of dollars to prevent the IRS from doing this exact thing. I remember in the early 2000s when it was revealed that Intuit successfully lobbied to remove IRS funding for their then attempt to allow online filing with the IRS directly. The number of times the US has removed massive amounts of funding at the behest of the tax prep industry is astounding.
It literally took the FTC to this year to finally hammer down on Intuit hiding free file options (free file is the other IRS program that you've likely heard about, direct file is very different from it. Free file is done through a 3rd party, Direct File is with the IRS directly) for nearly a decade. Even the vast amounts of PDFs that were finally released to the public that were pretty damning in that Intuit was very aware of what it was doing.
It's just really hard to express how much these companies have made filing taxes a pain. How much money and connections they've burned through to maintain the status quo. AND FINALLY, we're getting a small test of just a small amount of what the IRS would like people to do. Review their 1040s and what-not that the IRS already has and click a button saying "Yeap, looks good to me."
The obvious solution here... (Score:3)
... would be for the government to provide the filing software and take these parasites out of the picture. Even better, negate the need for many people to file anything by deducting tax at source - like most same countries.
Re:The obvious solution here... (Score:4, Interesting)
Intuit has been spending hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying against the obvious solution.
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