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

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

#31

Post by decebalus1 »

I hate TurboTax with a passion. At this point, the only benefit I see from it is the fact that because my taxes are boring, I just update the information from the last return. Which is something the IRS could do EASILY. Because of all the 'tax freedom' which has been lobbied in America, I now have to pay a private corporation, navigate countless dark patterns to make sure I don't accidentally sign up for Super AuDiTProTec™ at every step of the way (God forbid I sell stock or do something soo complicated), to do something the federal government is more than competent to do on their own.

Every piece of news in which Intuit gets slapped is good news to me. I just hope legislators start doing their jobs at some point and spare the taxpayer of this bullshit.

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

#32

Post by belval »

crooked-v wrote: post #26
belval wrote: post #13

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 m…

In the US, the Republican Party has a history of intentionally pushing for cumbersome tax filing as part of encouraging people to hate the idea of taxes in general.

I don't think it's a Republican thing, the Liberal party and the NPD in Canada are both left-leaning and they have a majority yet they aren't pushing for this.

Pretty sure it's just run-of-the-mill lobbying and corruption unfortunately. A typical "think of the jobs!" type of thing.

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

#33

Post by JRKrause »

I manually filed a revision to a previous tax year in which I had accidentally double-payed state taxes on a schedule K-2 disbursement two years back. Without any background in this I was able to follow the IRS and state-gov websites to get everything together and ultimately received my check for the difference (many thousands of dollars). All without paying a dollar.

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

#35

Post by colinmhayes »

bluGill wrote: post #16
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…

I'll second free tax usa. Quick process, $10.

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

#37

Post by monetus »

belval wrote: post #32
crooked-v wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, the Republican Party has a history of intentionally pushing for cumbersome tax filing as part of encouraging people to hate the idea of taxes in general.

I don't think it's a Republican thing, the Liberal party and the NPD in Canada are both left-leaning and they have a majority yet they aren't pushing for this. Pretty sure it's just run-of-the-mill lobbying and corruption unfortunately. A typical "think of the jobs!" type of thing.

I wouldn't say its not a republican thing, just also a many other people/groups thing. You're right, just wanted to emphasize that.

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

#38

Post by zentiggr »

mynameisash wrote: post #14
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 eve…

Your situation sounds like one that a CPA would be perfect for - especially with business taxes involved.

Our household has just the basic salaries / expenses / 401k / IRAs. THe year I received some temporary additional benefits, Intuit decided that I had to pay premium in order to enter that single additional 1099.

I left, found a much simpler, straightforward service with which I filed legitimately free, and have never looked back.

Plus, I've read about Intuit's history with the whole market, and I will never willingly give them a damn cent.

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

#39

Post by paulpauper »

Someone1234 wrote: post #17
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…

what is to stop someone from just underreporting and blaming laziness or the process being too complicated. either the govt. audits it themselves or does nothing. the benefit of the doubt is on your side.

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

#40

Post by tzs »

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.

I used Cash App Taxes. I sold some mutual fund shares in 2021 and it handled it fine.

Here's a page describing forms and situations it does not handle [1].

One thing that might annoy some people is that to login to the Cash App Taxes website you must use their mobile app. The website shows a QR code which you scan from the mobile app.

It uses the approach of asking you various questions in order to figure out what forms it thinks you need to file, which is an approach that some people do not like.

If there is a form you know you have to do that it missed or you have a 1099-something that it has not asked you to enter it took me a little while to figure out how to deal with that. What you do is type the name of the form into the help search box. One of the results will be a link to take you directly to the page that deals with that form.

[1] https://taxeshelp.cash.app/s/article/Forms-and-situations-Ca...

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