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FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices

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Re: FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices

#131

Post by tssva »

cactus2093 wrote: post #122
klmadfejno wrote: post #50

God I hope this suit is successful. Lots of people here are discussing the regulatory trap they've got, and that's a big problem. But the actual problem mentioned in the suit is deceptive marketing. TurboTax is the worst in this regard. Last year, I, at every step of the process, declined the expensive options that say "maybe you'll save more money if you permanently switch into this paid mode". Yet after a couple ho…

Seems like TurboTax is probably not worth the hassle of trying to use for free. They try to steer you at every turn into accidentally accepting the paid features, and if you manage to make it through the maze there doesn't really seem to be much left that makes them better than any of the simpler competitors if you stick to the free tiers - no saving your information year over year, no automatically importing the sup…

Because Intuit, H&R Block and others have spent enormous amounts of money and time lobbying federal and state legislatures and executive agencies to ensure they don't.

My state had developed a free filing system and had successfully tested it with selected tax filers for a couple of years. It was due to go live the following year for all state tax filers. Intuit and others successfully lobbied the state legislature and newly elected governor to ban the state from moving forward with deploying a solution.

Re: FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices

#133

Post by masklinn »

pmiller2 wrote: post #127
masklinn wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I thought the official IRS form filler was discontinued? IRS's own service was discontinued after an agreement with tax preparation companies that they would provide such a service (the IRS Free File Program) if your AGI is below 69k (nice). Which they do, but try to hide as much as they can via negative SEO and various dark pattern, so that you unknowingly get directed towards "free" offers which quickly require y…

Unfortunately, Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj was canceled[0]. The last episode was June 28, 2020: "Why Doing Taxes Is So Hard" It's too bad. I thought it was a really worthwhile show. --- [0]: https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/hasan-minhaj-patriot-act-ca...

Yes, that’s what I meant by “last episode”. I should probably have written “final” or “ultimate”.

Re: FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices

#134

Post by Broken_Hippo »

rootusrootus wrote: post #110
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure payroll taxes are things taxed at the source: I'm not sure there is a less painful way to tax for, say, social security or military spending. I'd honestly be happy changing some things into payroll taxes, honestly: Gasoline taxes, for example, aren't going to fund roads as much in the future (and efficient cars are already causing issues). Folks that work use roads in most cases, though, even if they…

> This method of "filing taxes" makes it easy to comply with filing and I'm guessing it makes collection rates better with less work. This is by design, in the US the anti-tax crowd wants filing taxes to be harder and more inefficient. It serves their purposes. And they are a powerful lobbying group.

While the anti-tax folks sometimes want this, I'm pretty sure most of the actual lobbying that keeps it difficult is done by the tax software companies - Intuit, for example.

Not including sales tax actually demonstrates more clearly the result of anti-tax sentiment, though I'm still not convinced it is lobbying itself that does this. Instead, the same sort of folks go into politics and directly get involved in making laws about this sort of thing. Of course, this is built on a long-standing anti-tax sentiment in the US that folks tie into an "origin story" of sorts (taxation from England minimally helped spur the revolution).

And they do have a point: The more of a pain a tax is for the taxpaper, the more they think about disliking taxes. But it doesn't realistically go that far: We do all sorts of things to make paying taxes easier for folks. Gasoline prices include all taxes (from federal down to sales tax). Payroll taxes are deducted from your paycheck. Stores collect sales tax instead of you sending it to the government. Prepaid phone plans still have taxes included and renters don't pay for property tax directly.And so on.

Re: FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices

#135

Post by neilfrndes »

cactus2093 wrote: post #122
klmadfejno wrote: post #50

God I hope this suit is successful. Lots of people here are discussing the regulatory trap they've got, and that's a big problem. But the actual problem mentioned in the suit is deceptive marketing. TurboTax is the worst in this regard. Last year, I, at every step of the process, declined the expensive options that say "maybe you'll save more money if you permanently switch into this paid mode". Yet after a couple ho…

Seems like TurboTax is probably not worth the hassle of trying to use for free. They try to steer you at every turn into accidentally accepting the paid features, and if you manage to make it through the maze there doesn't really seem to be much left that makes them better than any of the simpler competitors if you stick to the free tiers - no saving your information year over year, no automatically importing the sup…

> Why doesn't IRS have a web app like Turbotax?

Because of great lobbying by Intuit. This planet money episode goes into the details: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/04/03/709656642/epis...

Re: FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices

#136

Post by nurbel »

vonmoltke wrote: post #81
masklinn wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How does your employer know what "the appropriate amount of taxes" is? It's an approximation based on your revenue (and they know how much they'll pay you). At end-year everything is tallied all proper and as taxpayer you either have to pay the missing bits (if you have extra revenues which weren't accounted for by your salary) or you receive a wire transfer from the state (if you had deductions which weren't taken…

I think I should have left the "End of process." in the quote, because this makes more sense. It's not the end of the process. The taxing authority sends you an estimate, you adjust based on a few factors they didn't account for and send it back. That still raises the question, though, of how your employer knows enough about your tax situation to not significantly over or under withhold. If my wife and I just relied…

In France, my employer gets a percentage from the tax administration that they withold from the salary. If my financial situation changes, I can update my previsional income online

Re: FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices

#137

Post by loosescrews »

klmadfejno wrote: post #50

God I hope this suit is successful. Lots of people here are discussing the regulatory trap they've got, and that's a big problem. But the actual problem mentioned in the suit is deceptive marketing. TurboTax is the worst in this regard. Last year, I, at every step of the process, declined the expensive options that say "maybe you'll save more money if you permanently switch into this paid mode". Yet after a couple ho…

I have tried nearly all of the DIY tax offerings out there. CreditKarma has a relatively new completely free offering that I feel rivals TurboTax in ease of use. I also feel that it is superior to paid offerings such as H&R Block.

Another completely free offering is freetax.com. I used them for a few years, and while not quite as easy to use, it works well.

Note that both of these free offerings include free state tax filing and have no income limits or up sells.

Re: FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices

#138

Post by squeaky-clean »

tvb12 wrote: post #107
Cactus2018 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This year I was unable to get to the print-out without paying

If I remember correctly, you have to go through the IRS freefile page (here: https://apps.irs.gov/app/freeFile/ ) to get to the "real" free version of turbotax. The link to the "free edition" on the main page of their site, confusingly, is something else. Turbotax's income limit for free filing is really low, though. Max income of $36,000.

I make more than that and didn't have to pay to file electronically. I downloaded turbotax through the iOS app store, using the app store search. Is this specifically for 1099 workers or something? (I get a W-2)

Edit, did some searching and it's completely free if you're able to file via a 1040EZ, which I'm pretty sure was my method. I don't know too much about tax filing though, so maybe I'm confused about things (I mean, I'm definitely confused about tax things overall, haha). I'm 100% positive TurboTax didn't take any additional money from my refund though.

Re: FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices

#139

Post by dragontamer »

loosescrews wrote: post #137
klmadfejno wrote: post #50

God I hope this suit is successful. Lots of people here are discussing the regulatory trap they've got, and that's a big problem. But the actual problem mentioned in the suit is deceptive marketing. TurboTax is the worst in this regard. Last year, I, at every step of the process, declined the expensive options that say "maybe you'll save more money if you permanently switch into this paid mode". Yet after a couple ho…

I have tried nearly all of the DIY tax offerings out there. CreditKarma has a relatively new completely free offering that I feel rivals TurboTax in ease of use. I also feel that it is superior to paid offerings such as H&R Block. Another completely free offering is freetax.com. I used them for a few years, and while not quite as easy to use, it works well. Note that both of these free offerings include free state ta…

I use TaxAct personally.

Re: FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices

#140

Post by ceejayoz »

loosescrews wrote: post #137
klmadfejno wrote: post #50

God I hope this suit is successful. Lots of people here are discussing the regulatory trap they've got, and that's a big problem. But the actual problem mentioned in the suit is deceptive marketing. TurboTax is the worst in this regard. Last year, I, at every step of the process, declined the expensive options that say "maybe you'll save more money if you permanently switch into this paid mode". Yet after a couple ho…

I have tried nearly all of the DIY tax offerings out there. CreditKarma has a relatively new completely free offering that I feel rivals TurboTax in ease of use. I also feel that it is superior to paid offerings such as H&R Block. Another completely free offering is freetax.com. I used them for a few years, and while not quite as easy to use, it works well. Note that both of these free offerings include free state ta…

> CreditKarma has a relatively new completely free offering that I feel rivals TurboTax in ease of use.

That's why Intuit bought them. Don't expect it to stick around. https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/24/intuit-credit-karma/

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