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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

#361

Post by KennyBlanken »

ehsankia wrote: post #281
zw123456 wrote: post #271

A few years back I got audited, and it was called an "electronic audit" by the IRS. Which basically meant that they had their computer systems scour a bunch of the bank records and discovered that I had forgotten to claim a 1099 for some contract work I had. OK, so they sent me a computer print out and they had cross checked everything on my return electronically, my property tax deductions, my stock dividends so on…

It's well known fact that the government can auto-file for most people, it's not really a secret. Many other countries do it, it's been proven to work just fine.

The IRS can't even handle people e-filing.

But don't worry, the project started in 2009 to replace their COBOL mainframe systems is kinda, sorta on track for completion...in 2030.

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

#362

Post by anitil »

rootusrootus wrote: post #67
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…

Thank Grover Norquist for that. Arguably he has had far more effect on this than the pittance Intuit has spent buying politicians.

What did Grover Norquist do (not-American here)?

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

#363

Post by KennyBlanken »

zw123456 wrote: post #360
moduspol wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same situation once (a missed 1099) and my biggest complaint is that they waited almost a year to let me know. And of course by then it was quite late so I owed them even more money! Even if they can't tell me what numbers they expect when I file, it seems like they could at least let me know within a few weeks if they're pretty sure I missed a 1099. Heck, I typically file at least a month early. They could…

Exactly my complaint as well! They could send me a monthly statement like my city government does. Instead, they wait a year to let me know I slipped up and then charge me interest. Guys, if you know I slipped up now you could have told me a year ago.

This is not purposeful but likely a side effect of them still relying on ancient COBOL mainframes that seem unable to keep up with the growing population (and thus growing number of tax filers.)

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

#364

Post by anamax »

UncleMeat wrote: post #90
anamax wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The first step has to be repealing Citizen's United. Citizen's United was a group that made a political-advocacy movie and the FEC wanted to treat it as regulated political activity.

It was. And the consequence of this ruling was nearly unlimited amounts money being spent on the reelection campaigns of various lawmakers by corporations, with the obvious intent being to install friendly legislators.

Yup, every major newspaper and TV/Cable network is a corporation.

If the NYT can push candidates, why not Sears?

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

#365

Post by abledon »

throwawayboise wrote: post #44
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.

That's why I do my taxes manually and mail them in. I want it to be as painful as possible.

haha, have it done all automatically in SimpleTax, then download the PDFs, run a custom character-to-messy-handwriting transformer on all filled fields, then print out the paper forms and mail them in

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

#366

Post by redler »

somethingwitty1 wrote: post #265
paxys wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TurboTax's dark patterns charge people $50, not $600. How exactly did she end up paying that much?

Have you gone through TurboTax's filing process? It starts with ~$149 upgrade for me, I believe. They have countless add-ons that popup throughout the filing process beyond just that (annual audit defense membership, get your refund faster, etc). So many up-sells and cross-sells, it is pretty disgusting. I stopped using them last year because it was just too much. I can easily see how someone could end up with a mult…

So they're trying to completely fill the price shadow underneath the $500 or so a very basic "entry-level" accountant relationship would cost — and fill it with a zero-marginal-cost roster of non-product products and non-service services. Terrible.

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

#367

Post by zw123456 »

jimmaswell wrote: post #337
zw123456 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, dumb mistake on my part, so I track it better now. The point is, do I really have to do all this work tracking everything to guess which card they are hiding behind their backs. It's kinda dumb IMO.

They probably just sent you a letter asking you to pay it with a smidgen of interest and that was that, right? Probably hardly worth doing extra work to be super thorough unless it was a large amount.

ya, it was stupid, the interest was about $300 or something. I would have paid the original amount but I just screwed up and mis-placed the 1099. It was a gotchya game. I think this could be why people hate taxes so much, of course we all hate taxes but the way you do it matters IMO.

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

#368

Post by dehrmann »

Johnny555 wrote: post #298
zw123456 wrote: post #271

A few years back I got audited, and it was called an "electronic audit" by the IRS. Which basically meant that they had their computer systems scour a bunch of the bank records and discovered that I had forgotten to claim a 1099 for some contract work I had. OK, so they sent me a computer print out and they had cross checked everything on my return electronically, my property tax deductions, my stock dividends so on…

they had their computer systems scour a bunch of the bank records and discovered that I had forgotten to claim a 1099 I assumed they did that automatically for everyone -- does that mean that if I "forget" to attach a 1099 then they IRS won't know unless they do this special "electronic audit"?

At some point this becomes a Fourth Amendment violation, so that might prevent the IRS from doing it.

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

#369

Post by medvezhenok »

autoexec wrote: post #349
wnevets wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

American politicians can be bought off very cheaply by corporations, but the minute people try to crowd-fund bribes to get actual representation in government corporations will just start to offer more. Some companies and industries have more wealth than entire nations at their disposal. If it comes down to a bidding war between you and Google you will lose. If paying out a little more to congressmen will keep an ind…

A neat solution is actually public campaign financing. We currently say that you can give $3 towards public financing on your tax return when you file - why not make that $100?

Collectively, people have a lot more money than corporations do - the trouble is organization. But basically flooding the system with so much money that corporate bribery becomes insignificant is the other option to banning it

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

#370

Post by UncleMeat »

eropple wrote: post #300
UncleMeat wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Worse, virtually all of the 1098-T guidance exists for undergrads. The problems with the form are entirely different for graduate students and basically nobody can help. > Out of curiosity, was the tax preparer…

In my experience, somebody who has tax preparation as a primary job is often not a CPA. A CPA usually offers a suite of services, and is also usually a lot more useful. My CPA is great, and I save money through using his services.

"Primary job" as in "not a side gig."
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