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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

#171

Post by aidangrimshaw »

dataflow wrote: post #166
aidangrimshaw wrote: post #151

I'm working with other contributors on https://ustaxes.org , an open source tax filing webapp https://github.com/ustaxes/UsTaxes . Currently, many Federal tax forms are supported, as well as tax filing for the state of Illinois. Filing for Oregon and California is under development!

This sounds awesome. How does the user handle the actual filing? I assume you don't have any way to provide e-filing, so would people have to print this out and mail it?

Yeah, currently the user would print out the PDF generated by the site and mail it in to the IRS. E-filing is on the roadmap, but registering as an E-file provider is a pretty complex process. One of the options we were thinking about is scraping and automatically filling in fields on the free fillable forms site https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-form...

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

#172

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

judge2020 wrote: post #146
kn0where wrote: post #43

Good, but the situation is so much worse than just this. Most Americans could just use the IRS Free File system, which the article mentions, instead of ever giving money to Intuit or H&R Block ever again. But we don’t heavily advertise that system, because that would encourage people to use it, and if you’re going that far, you might as well let the IRS build its own tax software with all your information prefilled l…

Isn’t the free file system simply asking e-file companies to offer a free program to qualifying customers? I thought that the IRS didn’t actually run their own filling system/website for citizens.

Yes, here's the list -> https://apps.irs.gov/app/freeFile/browse-all-offers/

However, those options aren't advertised and these companies like to do "Free" but then upgrade you as you fill out options.

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

#173

Post by l33t2328 »

_jal wrote: post #156
saddestcatever wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO: The mind blowing element, is that in the grand scheme of things It's not actually that much money . I'm not sure if anyone knows the true amount, but estimates put the number spent on lobbying around a few million dollars. Opensecrets.org estimated ~$3.2m lobbying in 2021. https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary... For a company that makes $2 BILLION dollars a year, the amount they actually…

Politicians are surprisingly cheap, so long as you're talking about topics that don't get a lot of press. And thanks to Citizens United and similar decisions that have driven up the cost of US elections, US pols are very expensive compared to their counterparts in other countries. It does make me wonder about the efficacy of standing up a lobbying fund to lobby to Do The Right Thing about something. This would be a p…

> standing up a lobbying fund to lobby to Do The Right Thing about something. This would be a prime example - I would happily pay $100 to compete with Intuit's lobbying here. I'm also certain there are 31,999 other people in the US who feel the same way.

Congratulations, you just independently invented the concept of a Political Action Committee.

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

#175

Post by rurp »

zentiggr wrote: post #38
mynameisash wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

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

Which service is that? I haven't filed my taxes this year and am willing to spend some time switching to an app that's less scummy than Intuit's offerings.

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

#176

Post by freedomben »

aidangrimshaw wrote: post #151

I'm working with other contributors on https://ustaxes.org , an open source tax filing webapp https://github.com/ustaxes/UsTaxes . Currently, many Federal tax forms are supported, as well as tax filing for the state of Illinois. Filing for Oregon and California is under development!

That's really neat and I'm glad you're doing it. That said I worked on tax software once and the amount of changes each year are huge and often require expert analysis. Sometimes they get dropped on you with very little notice.

How does the project plan to keep up with that? Will it require volunteers?

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

#177

Post by throwaway81523 »

saddestcatever wrote: post #143
itslennysfault wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.... and just to be completely clear, this is only the way it is because of HUGE lobbying spends by Intuit.

IMO: The mind blowing element, is that in the grand scheme of things It's not actually that much money . I'm not sure if anyone knows the true amount, but estimates put the number spent on lobbying around a few million dollars. Opensecrets.org estimated ~$3.2m lobbying in 2021. https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary... For a company that makes $2 BILLION dollars a year, the amount they actually…

That is called the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullock_paradox .

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

#178

Post by glenstein »

_jal wrote: post #156
saddestcatever wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO: The mind blowing element, is that in the grand scheme of things It's not actually that much money . I'm not sure if anyone knows the true amount, but estimates put the number spent on lobbying around a few million dollars. Opensecrets.org estimated ~$3.2m lobbying in 2021. https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary... For a company that makes $2 BILLION dollars a year, the amount they actually…

Politicians are surprisingly cheap, so long as you're talking about topics that don't get a lot of press. And thanks to Citizens United and similar decisions that have driven up the cost of US elections, US pols are very expensive compared to their counterparts in other countries. It does make me wonder about the efficacy of standing up a lobbying fund to lobby to Do The Right Thing about something. This would be a p…

I completely agree that politicians are not cheap at all. The reality is that so much of the money that's invested in influencing politicians is through means other than campaign contributions.

It's through season tickets to the network of friends that know the politician, it's through donations to the university that gets their child into college, it's through pacs and issue groups, it's through lining up and bundling donors to max out their individual donations to a politician's preferred presidential candidate, it's through flying them out to special events, it's through hiring their best friend, it's through investing in their brother in law's new business, it's through buying things at their husband or wife's charity auction, it's through arranging a job for them after they retire from politics, it's through finding them a buyer for their investment property, it's through an entire network of investments one or two degrees removed from the politician.

The only sliver of that that people typically cite is the amount directly spent on campaign contributions which (1) mistakenly makes it seem like politicians are cheap and (2) is underwhelming, to people who cite those numbers sincerely believing that that's the only economic dimension to political influence.

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

#179

Post by dataflow »

aidangrimshaw wrote: post #171
dataflow wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds awesome. How does the user handle the actual filing? I assume you don't have any way to provide e-filing, so would people have to print this out and mail it?

Yeah, currently the user would print out the PDF generated by the site and mail it in to the IRS. E-filing is on the roadmap, but registering as an E-file provider is a pretty complex process. One of the options we were thinking about is scraping and automatically filling in fields on the free fillable forms site https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-form...

Cool! Autofilling those forms sounds like an awesome thing if you can manage it! Best of luck! And thanks for doing this!

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

#180

Post by Osiris »

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 use FreeTaxUsa.com. It's free for federal filing.
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