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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

#81

Post by ndiddy »

lapetitejort wrote: post #5
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,…

Other sites are no better. This yeah I went through the whole flow on H&R Block, and only at the end did they say they couldn't file my taxes because of one 1099-NEC. However I still had to pay full price to print out my forms. Which I had to print and send myself.

I've used Free File Fillable Forms (https://www.freefilefillableforms.com/home/default.php) for federal tax for the past few years and haven't had any issues. There's no payment whatsoever. For state, I've filed on my state's website.

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

#82

Post by gumballindie »

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,…

Good thing i turned down an offer with them, in london, uk, over ten years ago. Money was sweet but i sensed the stink.

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

#83

Post by gumballindie »

I dont live in the us, but i am curious, what prevents open source developers from writing a decent open source alternative? Or other smaller companies from competing with intuit? Is there a law only allowing them to idk use government apis? To me it sounds like intuit is about to be disrupted one way or another.

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

#84

Post by ProllyInfamous »

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

[flagged]

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

#85

Post by sinistersnare »

jakearmitage wrote: post #67
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are you assuming Democrats are inherently good and well-meaning and could not make this happen due to a missed opportunity? Because corruption goes both ways. There's a reason one party blames the other for X when the other is in power, and then do nothing about X when they are in power.

I agree with you. The Democrats and Republicans in our government mostly agree on the topic we are discussing in this thread.

There is no radical movement discussed within our government to actually solve these problems. No politician is making serious attempts to improve our bureaucratic system.

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

#86

Post by screamingninja »

gumballindie wrote: post #83

I dont live in the us, but i am curious, what prevents open source developers from writing a decent open source alternative? Or other smaller companies from competing with intuit? Is there a law only allowing them to idk use government apis? To me it sounds like intuit is about to be disrupted one way or another.

The tax code is very complex, changes quite a bit every year, and a FOSS developer could not guarantee the accuracy of the generated tax forms. On top of that, each state has a different tax code, which further complicates any development effort.

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

#87

Post by spunker540 »

mrguyorama wrote: post #57
distract8901 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The name is sketchy and the website is just as bad. Every instinct I have says they're a shady scam site just waiting to steal my info. But no, they're actually good and just have terrible marketing and design. Sure makes doing my taxes interesting. I've been using them for three years

>But no, they're actually good and just have terrible marketing and design. Maybe we should realize WE are in the wrong for conflating "Shiny, animation filled website" with "not scam".

I think we've all learned to conflate these things from lived experience, not some mis-placed prejudice against ugly UIs.

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

#88

Post by spunker540 »

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…

I'm not too convinced about the lobbying argument. I know they spend $2-3M per year on lobbying. but 1) our govt doesnt get anything done anyways, regardless of how much Intuit spends. I believe the null hypothesis is pretty likely here (they could not spend that money and still be the #1 tax company and no real laws get passed to take that away from them). 2) $3M just doesnt sound like a lot to a company as big as Intuit. If that's all it takes to get congress on your side, seems like not that big an obstacle in the first place for any company in any industry.

I am open to more direct evidence to the contrary though.

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

#89

Post by ThatPlayer »

turrican wrote: post #6
lapetitejort wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other sites are no better. This yeah I went through the whole flow on H&R Block, and only at the end did they say they couldn't file my taxes because of one 1099-NEC. However I still had to pay full price to print out my forms. Which I had to print and send myself.

I’m not going to shill too hard for a tax prep company, but I’ve used FreeTaxUSA for years and am satisfied. Cheap, simple, no hidden fees I’ve noticed.

I would love to keep using them, but looking at my current tax year, I want to file a specific state form that they do not support. For estimated taxes calculated by annualized income installment method because my income is tilted towards the end of the year. I haven't paid any estimated taxes for the first two quarters, and without this I'd have underpayment fees.

I did ask them about this two years ago, so if they don't add it for 2023, I'll have to look into other options.

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

#90

Post by Brybry »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #69
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Democrats have not been in charge for a couple decades or more. Manchin has long not toed the line with Democrats, and Sinema is officially not a Democrat, so they are not even at 50 senate votes. And they are the minority in the House, so they clearly do not have any control of Congress. You also need 60 votes in the Senate for whatever reason, which they are nowhere close to. The last time sort of had it, which was…

For anyone curious, Wikipedia has a great article[1] showing party trifecta history in Congress (though keep in mind what lotsofpulp said about needing 60 votes in the Senate for true control, which is rare for both parties).

And when Democrats were stronger in Congress earlier in Biden's term they did pass legislation giving funding to the IRS to explore developing software for doing taxes (Sec. 10301 (1)(B) of the Inflation Reduction Act[2]).

Further, when Republicans forced the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 during the last debt ceiling increase "crisis" they specifically listed (1)(B) as part of their recension of funds[3], though I don't think it had any meaningful impact because the study had already been made and released. [4]

Because $15,000,000 was a really big deal to the federal deficit. /s

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_Stat...

[2] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-117publ169/html/PLA...

[3] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-118publ5/html/PLAW-...

[4] https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-submits-direct-file-report-...

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