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FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign

ftc.gov

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Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign

#12

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

ed_elliott_asc wrote: post #6

Is there a way to do your taxes without paying any money?

Doing them yourself is an option, but I prefer to be guided by software.

Credit Karma has an option to do taxes that is completely free, but I tried it once a few years ago and didn't care for it.

I use FreeTaxUSA which offers free federal and $7 state taxes. Cheaper than a meal at Taco Bell.

Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign

#13

Post by belval »

I know that ship has sailed, but I really wish politicians would go back to making promises that have an impact on everyone like abolishing tax fillings.

It might be different in the US, but in Canada I file my taxes using the CRA's data directly. TurboTax even fetches it directly from their website. What's the point? They have my T4, my T2202 (studies) and everything else. Just send me a letter telling me how much money I owe/I am owed and that's it.

Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign

#14

Post by mynameisash »

markc wrote: post #3

I was 80% done with my taxes this year when TT suddenly demanded an additional $119 to list deductible expenses on income. That’s on top of $140 to file Federal plus 1 state. I’ve been using TT for 20 years. Never again.

I'm not confident in my ability to get my taxes right (mostly due to my wife and I having owned small businesses plus my day job's stock awards and ESPP), so I've paid a local CPA to do our taxes for years now. He always did an incredible job, was happy to answer my questions for me (tax-related or not), helped us refi our house at an amazing price, and so on. His fees were something on the order of $400 or maybe even as high as $600 some years. But [a] I knew he always had our back, [b] his services partially or entirely paid for themselves in savings I probably wouldn't have caught, and [c] I was paying an individual who earned his keep as compared to a company like Intuit.

Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign

#15

Post by throwawaygh »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #8

> "In some TurboTax ads, "almost every word spoken is the word 'free.'" Really? There are some TurboTax ads where every word spoken is the word 'free.' ;)

Almost. I thought that was hyperbole too, but... holy shit, they aren't kidding:

1. https://www.tvcommercialad.com/watch/XosLKPV

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qDZA7j4rXU

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZV7l3AD5Nc

Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign

#16

Post by bluGill »

foxyv wrote: post #7

Did my taxes this year using TurboTax like always. Sold some stocks this year and all of a sudden I am paying $90 for TurboTax "Premium" to put a couple additional entries in the 1040. What a racket. Next year I'm going to file using something else. This has gone on too long.

Let me know if you find anyone that is better. I'm sick of TaxAct premium for the same reason.

I'm ready to go back to doing my taxes by hand and mailing them in. (I'm old enough to remember doing that - it is faster than doing it on the computer except for the one year I forgot to copy line 13 of form 1234A to line 56b of form 9876B) So many dark patters where the software is pretending to take time doing a complex calculation that takes a computer a couple nanoseconds, not to mention all the time to skip over things that don't apply to me.

Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign

#17

Post by Someone1234 »

ed_elliott_asc wrote: post #6

Is there a way to do your taxes without paying any money?

In theory, yes.

But few people actually do because it is a painful experience. The IRS' documentation isn't actually bad, it is just that the tax system itself is incredibly (and needlessly) complicated.

For example, you'd need to hand-enter every stock trade (even automated re-investments) even though your broker likely already electronically sent this information to the IRS. Using a digital solution they can often log into your broker and auto-import everything.

For how under-budget the IRS is and how bad the tax system is, they do ok, but the whole thing needs a massive overhaul but there is money in politics keeping it bad in order to profit private companies (plus there's a certain demographic that "hating taxes" is a political position that needs to be kept up with, essentially self-reinforcing-itself).

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