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FTC judge decides Intuit’s ‘free’ TurboTax ads misled consumers

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Re: FTC judge decides Intuit’s ‘free’ TurboTax ads misled consumers

#71

Post by willcipriano »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #66
JAlexoid wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean... They pay off literally every single lawmaker, to make sure that you will pay them for doing your taxes. If you had any respect for them at any time, you probably shouldn't have. The level of corruption that they support is stunningly humongous. And even if you're using your "local tax person" - you're likely to be still making them money... as many CPAs use Intuit's software.

Democrats have the opportunity to change that. Every time Republicans are in charge, the Democrats scream loudly about letting the IRS offer their own free tax filing service and blame Republicans for it not happening. The IRS is trying again right now to offer free filing and the Democrats are in charge of Congress and the presidency. They can make this happen or they can let the IRS's work go to waste and reserve t…

It's really funny when a party is in power and they have to pretend to be "working hard" but the goal is obviously to maintain the status quo.

Almost had them with force the vote.

Re: FTC judge decides Intuit’s ‘free’ TurboTax ads misled consumers

#72

Post by godelski »

electrondood wrote: post #3

Intuit is guilty of using a whole range of dark UI patterns to trick people into paying for products they don't need. Last year I almost paid $80 (surprise at the END of the entire TurboTax flow) and clicked back 10 steps to realize that they showed a deceptive screen that implied that you had to select that option. Their marketing emails are particularly deceptive, and if you try to opt out of them and unsubscribe,…

> Last year I almost paid $80 (surprise at the END of the entire TurboTax flow) and clicked back 10 steps to realize that they showed a deceptive screen that implied that you had to select that option.

I hit this two years ago. When I finally undid it (took me a good 20-30 minutes), it removed all the work I did. I then had the option to restore it for $80 and it was still implying that I had to pay this no matter what. I spent another 20 minutes trying to fill things out again before I hit a loop that wouldn't let me through without paying. The issue seemed to be that I was working remote in a different state and it was trying to get me to file taxes with both states even though it said I didn't need to file anything! I sucked it up and paid. So I avowed to never use them again. Last year I used FreeTaxUSA and had no issues. I just paid $15 for state and that was it. My taxes are simple, able to use a 1040EZ, having to pay $80 is a fucking joke.

Fuck TurboTax, I'm never going back. Fuck this whole system too. We should at minimum have return free filing for 1040EZ users but really should for almost everyone. Seriously, Meta/Equifax/etc can collect all my financial info but the fucking IRS can't use all the information that is legally required to be sent to them to send me a fucking bill (really a rebate)? What a fucking joke. One party wants to kill the IRS, why not at least make it not a fucking joke and bureaucratic shit show first?

Re: FTC judge decides Intuit’s ‘free’ TurboTax ads misled consumers

#74

Post by eli »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #51
eli wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conservatives hate the administrative state and want to destroy it. They would prefer the free market solve all problems instead of regulators like the SEC or FTC or EPA. The Federalist Society has been workshopping this fringe theory that Congress isn't allowed to delegate enforcement decisions to federal agencies and that administrative judges are somehow unconstitutional. This was an unsuccessful (!) argument agai…

what does "workshopping" mean here?

A process of collaborating and testing and tweaking and testing again.

Sense #3 here https://www.dictionary.com/browse/workshop

Re: FTC judge decides Intuit’s ‘free’ TurboTax ads misled consumers

#75

Post by ortusdux »

JAlexoid wrote: post #56
ortusdux wrote: post #21

Can we just switch to pre-filled tax forms already? The average American spends about $200/year and 12hrs preparing their taxes. This study from last year found that pre-filled tax forms would be accurate for 42-48% of people. That is already amazing, and I'm sure that number could be doubled over 10-20 years. https://www.nber.org/papers/w30008

There's probably not a single lawmaker that they don't have on the hooks, along with a litany of CPA's who's sole existence depends on you requiring to have someone just input numbers into Intuit QuickBooks. And most Americans just pretend that it's "fine". Fun fact - to avoid under-withholding my CPA wants to charge me $2300 per year, that's not tax deductible. A simple thing of making sure that my withholdings are…

One major issue is the number of jobs the current system props up. I wouldn't call it corruption when a lobbyist tells a Senator that pre-filled tax forms would cost their district 10k jobs. But I don't think the government should avoid providing preventative dental care because it might affect dentists' bottom line.

Re: FTC judge decides Intuit’s ‘free’ TurboTax ads misled consumers

#76

Post by jjtheblunt »

eli wrote: post #74
jjtheblunt wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what does "workshopping" mean here?

A process of collaborating and testing and tweaking and testing again. Sense #3 here https://www.dictionary.com/browse/workshop

thank you, and kinda seems too obvious now.

Re: FTC judge decides Intuit’s ‘free’ TurboTax ads misled consumers

#77

Post by dragonwriter »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #66
JAlexoid wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean... They pay off literally every single lawmaker, to make sure that you will pay them for doing your taxes. If you had any respect for them at any time, you probably shouldn't have. The level of corruption that they support is stunningly humongous. And even if you're using your "local tax person" - you're likely to be still making them money... as many CPAs use Intuit's software.

Democrats have the opportunity to change that. Every time Republicans are in charge, the Democrats scream loudly about letting the IRS offer their own free tax filing service and blame Republicans for it not happening. The IRS is trying again right now to offer free filing and the Democrats are in charge of Congress and the presidency. They can make this happen or they can let the IRS's work go to waste and reserve t…

> The IRS is trying again right now to offer free filing and the Democrats are in charge of Congress and the presidency.

No, Democrats are not in charge of Congress; Republicans have a majority in the House of Representatives and Democrats have a narrow majority, relying on two members that fairly consistently undermine Democratic policy priorities, in the Senate (and even without that problem don't have the 60 votes it takes to move normal legislation over a filibuster in the Senate.)

Re: FTC judge decides Intuit’s ‘free’ TurboTax ads misled consumers

#78

Post by pkulak »

JAlexoid wrote: post #64
harikb wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My tax guy uses Intuit Software as well. And I pay him 10x the cost of Turbo Tax. But I pay him for expertise / peace of mind. Intuit can fleece me all they want. Give me non-BS advanced features and I will gladly pay way more. Just don't trick my mom & dad. But I guess they need to make their money from the masses.

Let's be real - us paying them $4000 per year isn't going to make them money. Tricking your parents into paying for things that they don't even need - that's where the money is. Selling 20 $2mil cars per years isn't as valuable as selling 1mil "cheap" $700 iPhones per year.

Holy smokes do you ever have complicated taxes!

Re: FTC judge decides Intuit’s ‘free’ TurboTax ads misled consumers

#79

Post by genter »

electrondood wrote: post #3

Intuit is guilty of using a whole range of dark UI patterns to trick people into paying for products they don't need. Last year I almost paid $80 (surprise at the END of the entire TurboTax flow) and clicked back 10 steps to realize that they showed a deceptive screen that implied that you had to select that option. Their marketing emails are particularly deceptive, and if you try to opt out of them and unsubscribe,…

I always found it amazing that the amount of time it took to query their database was the exact amount needed to complete the animation.

Re: FTC judge decides Intuit’s ‘free’ TurboTax ads misled consumers

#80

Post by everforward »

bombcar wrote: post #65
everforward wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their marketing emails are particularly deceptive, and if you try to opt out of them and unsubscribe, they force you to enter personal information you don't readily have access to to "confirm your identity." That shouldn't be legal, and I'm surprised that doesn't get their emails redirected to /dev/null by everyone. Stuff like that doesn't even deserve the modicum of respect that getting sent to Spam denotes, mail…

Even having to enter my email address is too much. You sent it to me, you need a two click unsubscribe at worst. Otherwise it’s spam.

Totally agree. I would be behind email providers requiring bulk emails to implement whatever Gmail uses to provide that Unsubscribe button at the top of emails so you don't even have to go to their website. Any degree of difficulty is a bad pattern, and email providers should help discourage that with a heavy hand.

Edit: And also severe penalties for failing to actually unsubscribe someone within 24 hours of clicking that button. I don't want to hear any "it could take up to a week" bullshit. If people can transfer millions of dollars in a matter of days, they should be able to take me off a mailing list instantly.

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