FTC judge rules Intuit broke law, must stop advertising TurboTax as “free”

Fuck Intuit and H&R Block, all my homies use FreeTaxUSA.

A (now ex) coworker turned me on to FreeTaxUSA like a decade ago and I've been using it every year since then. It's easy, free (for federal) and just works. I usually pay the $15 for them to file state/school since I'm a lazy fuck but really, my time is worth something after all. I've had zero complaints with them.
- FWIW, CashApp Taxes (formerly Credit Karma Taxes) is free for state and federal.
- It also works smooth with state taxes! I used to have to manually fill out a pdf and attach for the state portion of the return with other software.
My wife and I have slightly complex taxes. We pay a local independent tax preparer to do it for us. I’d much rather my money go to a hard working neighbor than a scam-baiting company like intuit.
They're cheap, straightforward, and not Intuit. Enough said.
FTUSA is amazing. It's either free or super cheap, depending on your state and income. I wish I knew about them sooner. I did my taxes on my phone at work during a slow shift.
I have used FreeTaxUSA. One year FreeTaxUSA was giving me a pretty low return number, so I went with TurboTax instead. I agree FreeTaxUSA is cheaper, but make sure you cross compare to ensure you aren’t leaving money on the table.

At this point though, my taxes are so complicated, I just hire a professional.
It is absolutely wild that it's so bad over there, that you're gushing over a service that should just be provided by the government in the first place (and is, in most developed countries)
- For context, the reason I'm hating on Intuit and H&R Block and encouraging people to use FreeTaxUSA is because the first two are the main culprits behind the extensive lobbying that has led to the US government continuing to require people to file their own taxes rather than modernizing and making this process free and easy. My "gushing" is in pursuit of changing the broken system you're pointing out.
FreeTaxUSA also tried to charge me for state after saying it was free though.

I guess I could have printed out the forms I had just filled out and mailed them, but that's not exactly what was advertised. It's "free tax filing" not "free forms." I paid it because it was cheap, but then they kept kicking both my federal and state back to me with error messages saying they were not "accepted" by the IRS.

Cash app had no issues with the exact same information being "accepted." It just worked. And it was actually free.
- FreeTaxUSA was very clear that state isn't free. But if your state doesn't suck they'll make it easy to do online on your state site anyway.
  
  Also it's like $15 for state. I may have just happily paid that price for their service.
- I've never seen it say state filing is free. It's like $15 and its a deal.

I love how it's gone so far beyond "We would like to assist people in paying their taxes."

"We would like to prevent the US government from examining the possibility of creating it's own online tax filing portal."

"We would like to advertise our product as free using government channels and grants only to then turn around after the user has input their most sensitive data into our database and attempt to wring them for $100.00 or not be bound by our privacy policy."

Feels like every Evil Corporation (tm) has gone this route. In ye olden days it used to be a competitive market where businesses tried to provide the best product and services for the best prices. Then at some point everyone collectively decided to start doing as little as possible without getting sued. I'm so sick of it.

Regarding tax compliance for individuals, if you have the slightest complications in your financial situation, it might be best to pay a small time preparer $500 to deal with the hassle. Software isn't cheap these days so might as well pay a small premium for the better service a pro provides. (Disclaimer: I am a pro so my opinion is biased.)
- Agree, would rather my money went to a local firm with an actual person who I can consistently contact for questions. Did this a few years ago for an especially challenging tax year. Absolutely 0 regrets - if I had done it via self-serve software I would've missed out on quite a few unknown tax assists that the accountant found.
- It was in the specific moment that tort reform limited damages to 250,000 because they blamed an old Lady for getting burned by her 170° coffee. Though she was awarded like 7.6 million as an additive damage because.mcdonalds had been gently warned several times before

Every time you see a post like this, remember that one of your elected officials lined their pockets to fuck the entire country for generations ahead

You left out the best part... The amount is often extremely low. Just a few grand to the old PAC that directly feeds their campaign which is just a slush fund for their personal use.
- When you're the kind of person to do this, the number doesn't matter. It's the fact that you will get away with it
Why wouldn't they when they can do it without any fear of retribution? The worst they get is some angry comments from internet randoms.

In sane countries, the revenue service calculates your taxes for you and sends you a bill.

In Ireland and I believe most other European countries the tax is just taken out of your salary/wage by your employer and sent to Revenue. So unless you do something taxable outside of a normal wage you largely don’t need to worry about it.
- It is in the U.S. too, but you often either owe more than was taken out or are due a refund because too much was taken out. But you need tax software in order to figure that out because it's so damn complicated half the time.
- Yeah but it's much easier for the rich to find loop holes and not pay their fair share our way. So you see, it's much better! /s

I remember one time I spent an hour filing taxes, I accidentally hit a premium option, it literally didn't let me go back to free. On top of that it kept piling on charges. Fuck intuit. Thieving pieces of shit.

HRBlock is the same.

I refused to use them ever again after they tried to charge me $300 when it was listed as “free”
My brother accidentally hit premium a few years ago and the free option is just gone for good for him. It's such bull shit. I've never paid with turbo tax and was convinced he was doing something wrong. Nope, it's literally not available anymore for him.

Intuit is not your friend or ally, or anyone you want to do business with, or have an account on their many myriad of financial web sites, which they are gobbling up all the time

Any good alternatives to Credit Karma? Didn't even know Intuit owned them until the other day. :( I moved my funds from their savings account elsewhere but need a good alternative to keep tabs on my credit score.
- I don't know how they stack up to credit karma since I've never used them, but personally every bank, credit card, etc. that I use seems to have their own credit score tool somewhere on their app/website.
  
  I suspect they probably don't have quite as much data as something you're specifically paying for, they may update with different frequencies, etc. but if you just kind of want a good idea of what your credit score is and why, they're probably pretty adequate. Probably worth looking into whatever you already have before you look to throw more money at something.
- Maybe nerd wallet but I'm sure they're owned by someone shady too.
- You could keep using it and just ignore all the credit card ads they show you. That's how they make their money.
- Just keep in mind, credit karma shows you Vantage scores not FICO scores. FICO scores are what lenders actually look at.
Are you my friend/ally?
- No, that would be Saruman the White. He's both.
I’d love an alternative to Mint that allows automatic account syncing
- You need a budget, but it's not free.
  
  But with Intuit, you are the product, so it's only free in the sense that they get your info and you get mint in return.

Oh man, this feels good because I filed an FTC complaint against them :D

I feel like this might be a good time to plug the IRS Free File Program. It's a program that allows lower-income people to file their tax returns for free. While the program has been gutted in recent years by companies like Intuit leaving the program to either stop offering their services for free or to start offering a "free" alternative, it's still viable. I used it last year to file my taxes.

They should have been forced to do it the other way. “You advertise as free, so you have to provide this for free.”

Fuck the politicians that allow this shit to exist. Good on this move, but to be clear, it's the same folks who enabled it.

this is the root cause. complicit politicians

I use TurboTax ina free way - calculate all my taxes using their amazing software and then when the numbers match on the free site, I file there. That's the beauty of TurboTax that you can exploit. I feel it's fair game knowing they make the software open and then trick people who have calculated everything out to pay a ridiculous amount for the filing fee at the end.

Services provided by for profit corporations are almost never truly free. It usually means "free" in exchange for access to your user data or "free" if you watch these advertisements. That's not free, it's an exchange of your data that's valuable for resell to a company or your time to watch their ads.

There's an adage- if the service is free, you aren't the customer.

"Intuit will appeal this groundless and seemingly predetermined decision by the FTC to rule in its own favor and is confident that when the matter ultimately returns to a neutral body Intuit will prevail, as it has previously in this matter," the company said.

Lmao

it's insane how many words they have managed to write between the lines

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The initial decision by Administrative Law Judge D. Michael Chappell was released today and is subject to an automatic review by the full commission.

Moreover, if an Intuit good or service is not free for most US taxpayers, that fact must be "disclosed clearly and conspicuously at the outset of any disclosures required" by the order.

The ruling said that "Intuit had removed several of the most plausibly deceptive advertisements—that is, three videos that repeated the word 'free' a dozen or more times over 30 seconds before a very brief disclaimer."

"However, if Intuit resumes its full advertising campaign... or the facts on the ground change significantly, the FTC may return to this Court to request relief," US District Judge Charles Breyer wrote.

In its response to the administrative law judge's decision, Intuit said it expected the ruling because of the FTC's "flawed and highly questionable process, Chair Lina Khan's previous public and prejudicial statements against Intuit, and the fact that the FTC has ruled in its own favor in nearly every consumer protection case for the last two decades."

"We believe the FTC's decision is improper, wholly ignores the facts, and tramples on the foundations of an independent American judicial system with its serving as prosecutor, judge, and jury on its own matters," Intuit said.

The original article contains 860 words, the summary contains 216 words. Saved 75%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

a temporary problem turned into a permanent solution thanks to politicians who enable this on-top-of-taxes grift.

Is this old news or is this the second time for this issue?

Canada website has a list of free, donations and paid tax programs. Maybe some works everywhere else.

No, Canada has a very different tax system than the USA, and everywhere else doesn't have this problem.