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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

#121

Post by tonguez »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #93
mywittyname wrote: post #77

I found out from a friend that she paid $600 to have her taxes done because (presumably) she falls for the dark patterns that TurboTax uses. She's a low paid service worker whose tax return can probably be done for free. And it is a sizable portion of her income because of things like Earned income tax credits, child tax credits, etc. Fuck these companies.

Realistically, how would you do your tax return for free? Keep in mind that every service worker is terrified of an audit. The cost is much higher when you don’t have resources. EDIT: I think I didn't phrase this very well. My point was that the average service worker is trained to be terrified of the IRS. These people are already usually paying hefty fines because they missed their returns in prior years. That's why…

I would get rid of the tax return process as the only purpose for its existence is to waste the time of poor people and thus keep the government boot on their face.

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

#122

Post by munk-a »

wnevets wrote: post #95
jeffwask wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. Large on people scale not corporation scale which is why treating corporations like people is a terrible idea.

maybe the rest of us should start a gofundme so we can pool together our funds and buy a few politicians.

This has actually been done rather often in the past, you can start a donor driven PAC that can compete with corporate lobbyists with crowdfunding. It's generally quite a bit cheaper too because while we all love to criticize politicians for only listening to monied interests if they can raise some campaign funds and get brownie points for their voting base they're happy to dramatically spurn the corporate funding they'd otherwise accept with open arms.

Honestly though, actually reaching out to your representatives and talking to them is far more effective than most people assume.

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

#123

Post by junar »

UncleMeat wrote: post #97
vuln wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hiring a CPA was one of the best decisions I have made in my entire adult life.

My experience with CPAs has been poor. "I dunno, just put what you think is right" is how the last person I paid told me to handle a mismatch between my wife's actually grant payments and her 1098-T.

1098-T forms are notoriously unreliable. Schools will often misclassify or omit scholarships and payments. And you might have additional educational expenses like books that aren't listed in the first place. It doesn't excuse your experience, though; that tax preparer should have made a better effort to understand the figures.

Out of curiosity, was the tax preparer actually a licensed CPA, or just someone with no professional credentials? If they were a CPA, did they prepare individual tax returns regularly or only as a side job?

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

#124

Post by josephd79 »

Government: You must provide a free way for those that qualify.

Intuit: OK.

Intuits exec to its employees: Make this free system, but hide it from the public. Provide links that are broken, make sure it doesn't show up on search indexes.

Scott Cook and all those involved should have all of their assets seized. About as slimy as you can get as a person. Made billions off of scamming United States citizens.

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

#125

Post by ryanianian »

cmelbye wrote: post #114
bushbaba wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk. I think the IRS gets the better end of the stick here. They have you tell them how much you owe. If you report more than they knew about great they made money. If you tell them less than they knew about, then they'll audit you assuming the difference is large enough (and there being a high likelihood of winning)

If you are audited by the IRS and they find that you overpaid, they will issue a refund. It's not a one-way street.

Does the IRS start an audit if they suspect you massively overpaid? They certainly do if you massively underpay.

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

#126

Post by antsar »

cmelbye wrote: post #114
bushbaba wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk. I think the IRS gets the better end of the stick here. They have you tell them how much you owe. If you report more than they knew about great they made money. If you tell them less than they knew about, then they'll audit you assuming the difference is large enough (and there being a high likelihood of winning)

If you are audited by the IRS and they find that you overpaid, they will issue a refund. It's not a one-way street.

Sure. But why in the world would they audit you if you overpaid?

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

#127

Post by xtracto »

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 México if you are an average employee earning less than around $50000 usd (I.e. most workers), your employer can "do" your taxes (very simple, they report what they have withheld from you).

If you have some amounts you want to regain from losses, etc., you can still do your taxes manually.

That means logging into the free MEX IRS platform, which shows all your tax info preffilled. Most likely the stuff you want to input is already there (all invoices in mexico are signed by private/public keys through the IRS system).

So you just enter your bank account to get your money back. Or get your reference to pay your taxes.

The system is really beautiful.

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

#128

Post by tombert »

ngokevin wrote: post #106
mywittyname wrote: post #77

I found out from a friend that she paid $600 to have her taxes done because (presumably) she falls for the dark patterns that TurboTax uses. She's a low paid service worker whose tax return can probably be done for free. And it is a sizable portion of her income because of things like Earned income tax credits, child tax credits, etc. Fuck these companies.

The government has enough information to process the taxes for most of us or at least publicly make it super easy. TurboTax just lobbies the government to not do so.

About two weeks ago, I got a letter from the IRS telling me that I owe an extra eight-thousand dollars from my 2020 return, with a $1000 fine and $200 interest as a result. [1]

I'm not mad about owing the money, but what annoys me is if they have enough information to know that I underreported, then why am I part of this equation to begin with? Clearly they have enough of my tax data to know I screwed up, so why don't they just send me a bill once a year? I don't see why Intuit (or HR Block or TaxAct or Jackson Hewitt etc) need to be part of this transaction at all.

[1] It was an honest mistake on my end, I forgot to report a sizeable stock sale I did in 2020.

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

#129

Post by rurp »

sofixa wrote: post #61

As i mentioned on another thread[1], that's one of those American things that really don't make any sense after spending more than a few seconds about it. There is no legitimate excuse for things to be this bad. The best I've heard is that paying taxes being hard is good because it reminds you how much money you give the government, so you are more attentive how it's spent, but it doesn't really make sense either. ht…

I've heard a slightly different version of that rational, which I think is more more plausible but cynical. Tax collection is deliberately painful to justify cutting IRS funding and passing tax cuts (mostly for the very wealthy). It doesn't really make a lot of sense rationally, but might be effective as a manipulation tactic.
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