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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

#201

Post by revscat »

jeffwask wrote: post #27
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…

Intuit and HR Block spend way too much on US lobbying for that to change. The first step has to be repealing Citizen's United. https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f...

CU will never be peacefully repealed.

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

#202

Post by sillysaurusx »

wolverine876 wrote: post #198
sillysaurusx wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife and her parents. Not her sisters though, admittedly. It's possible that I'm just reacting to a biased sample of people. But my impression was that this is a common mindset for a nontrivial subset of the population. Being afraid of doing something wrong on your government forms isn't really an irrational fear. Anyone who's owned a car in Chicago will tell you that the city's goal is to extract as many thousand…

> Most people don't have a clue what day they need to file by. That does not at all match my experience, it's widely discussed every year, and I wonder how many returns are late.

Alright. Thanks for the data point.

But you left out income. The idea here is that HN users tend to be a biased sample. Most of us aren't impoverished.

I would bet that your family's discussions are due to the fact that you have a stable, fully functional family. Most people outside of tech aren't as fortunate.

If I'm mistaken about this, and your family isn't middle class or higher, then that's an important data point though.

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

#203

Post by creato »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #145
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…

I tried to make this point in the other thread, so let me take another stab at it here. You say this like it's just a thing that people can do. But the people you're telling to "Just do this" have already been trained to be terrified of the IRS. Many of them are currently paying huge fines due to missing their returns in prior years. Any small mistake can hang you when you're impoverished, precisely because you don't…

What are you actually referring to? In my experience, it takes a pretty serious mistake to get charged a fine (it’s never happened to me despite mistakes). The IRS just charges (fairly reasonable) interest if a mistake results in underpayment. And IIRC, they pay interest to you when you overpay too.

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

#204

Post by manholio »

ericmcer wrote: post #199
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…

I was not allowed to use the free file because I made >70k if I recall correctly. It seems really stupid and arbitrary to not allow people above a certain income to access software that helps them fill out govt. forms. Only lower income people deserve help filling out their taxes??! Bizarre.

> Bizarre

Follow the lobby money.

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

#205

Post by smitop »

function_seven wrote: post #150
antsar wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Whatever indicators they use to select audit recipients may correlate with under-payers, but it's not a guarantee. I'm sure there's some fraction of those they audit that turn out to have paid too much.

They have some data on this (https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p55b.pdf, pages 33-35). Out of 509,917 examinations, 18,988 resulted in a refund. There was $7.0 billion of tax refunded in 2020. For comparison, there was $17.2 billion of additional tax generated with additional recommended and unagreed amounts.

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

#206

Post by smordistan »

ericmcer wrote: post #199
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…

I was not allowed to use the free file because I made >70k if I recall correctly. It seems really stupid and arbitrary to not allow people above a certain income to access software that helps them fill out govt. forms. Only lower income people deserve help filling out their taxes??! Bizarre.

*edited for flagging

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

#207

Post by codetrotter »

lupire wrote: post #148
tombert wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

You can file taxes without a software package, if you want. You have to file because they want you to report things they don't know about, and also if you want to claim itemized deductions.

Here in Norway, the government fills out our tax forms for us with all of the information that has been reported to them by our banks, our employers, etc. It is then our responsibility as tax payers to look over the tax forms, add anything not included, and adding any additional claims for deductions.

By comparison, the needless busywork that the IRS puts the tax payers through is nothing short of ridiculous really. It only serves to waste time and effort, and there is plain and simple no reason whatsoever why the IRS could not do it like Norwegian tax authorities does. Our system here in Norway is not perfect either, but the citizens of the United States, and the US government, would benefit hugely from a tax filing system built to help you file taxes the way that ours does for us.

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

#208

Post by aclindsa »

I recently started an open-source tax solver, partly because I'm not a huge fan of Intuit: https://github.com/habutax/habutax

It isn't perfect since its a young project, but I've attempted to simplify and modularize the process of creating/maintaining forms to allow for that part to be crowd-sourced as much as possible (and I'd love your help!).

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

#209

Post by candiddevmike »

aidangrimshaw wrote: post #189
heavyset_go wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a CLA? If so, does anything prevent the rights holder(s) from closing the project and pivoting it towards a for-profit business? I'd like to contribute, but don't feel like building someone's business for free.

The project has an AGPL license if that's what you're wondering. We figured many people would feel the same way

This is an interesting situation for FOSS licenses. AGPL doesn't necessarily prohibit commercial behavior. I think if all the maintainers truly wanted to prevent anyone from commercializing it, you'd go with a source available license like BSL or creative commons.

It's interesting because having a group of disparate humans come together and say "yea, we hate the current thing, let's build something better and not commercialize it" doesn't typically happen. Kudos to you folks!

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

#210

Post by lelandfe »

notwedtm wrote: post #187
lelandfe wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone uses Google. How many more people see TurboTax's ads vs. government "tax related communications?"

Every single tax payer when they get paid, or when they pay their tax bill each year.

The years in which I've had a refund, I have had the amount directly deposited. The years in which I've paid have been through a software portal that supports credit card payment.

I, personally, have no idea what the government's "communications" have been regarding taxes outside of news articles.

Either way, though, this is no competition for a year's worth of massive advertising campaigns.

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