The Federal Trade Commission ruled in a final order and opinion Monday that TurboTax, the popular tax filing software, engaged in deceptive advertising and banned the company from advertising its services for free unless it is free for all customers.
By running ads for “free” tax services that many customers were not qualified for, the tax filing software violated the FTC Act and deceived consumers, the agency said.
The FTC had first sued Intuit, TurboTax’s owner, for its deceptive advertising in 2022. The FTC staff alleged most tax filers couldn’t use the company’s “free” services — “such as those who get a 1099 form for work in the gig economy, or those who earn farm income.” TurboTax advertising their products as free misled those customers, according to the FTC.
Why the fuck did this take like 15 years to do though?
They’ve probably pulled this “free” scam a billion times already, and it was obvious AF that it was intentionally deceptive from day one
Because they used all that money they made from the free filings to pay lawyers and lobbyists to show that technically - technically - it really is free from a certain perspective. If you really squint.
Yeah, I’m just so sick of modern “justice”. Up until recently I would’ve had my life destroyed over a bag of weed.
But companies intentionally defraud hundreds of millions of people, that’s not a problem
You need to see the world outside yourself more. Yes, it was obvious to you, not to grandpa or to Marge who works at the diner down the street
- I was talking about regulators
- apparently you think people are too stupid to know that they were forced to pay for something advertised as free. (Not related to the point but since you brought it up)
Can’t agree with you on point 2
This is great! Now I wish they’d stop them from lobbying to make it seem like only TurboTax is the free or “best” way to do your taxes.
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I’m partial to freetaxusa, one of the IRS partners. They made it relatively easy to do my Uber taxes without paying anything.
Same. Easier to use and it has lost none of my history unlike TurboTax (which I refuse to use because of their lobbying BS).
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For the people in the back, if you make less than 56k a year the IRS will do your taxes for you for free. If you make more than that or just don’t want to work directly with the IRS then there is www.freetaxusa.com that will also do your taxes for free unless you want to spend like 15$ extra to have a professional help review them
I’m also stoked for the government funding going towards rail infrastructure.
Let’s enjoy it while it lasts I guess 🥲
Yellen starting the new year swinging.
FYI for any fellow Americans, you can probably do your taxes actually for free in minutes with well-designed software using cashapp. I’ve done it for the last two years and it is such a ridiculous upgrade from turbotax it’s hard to believe.
I have no idea about their privacy policies or anything like that but I know it’s super easy.
I’m sure you mean well but I would strongly strongly encourage folks to use separate companies for specific services. And for something like taxes, something with a history. Companies offering a Swiss-army knife approach to features often half-ass the feature, give up and sell your info to a random company.
