Class-Action Lawsuit Says TurboTax Tricked Taxpayers Into Paying For 'Free' Tax Prep (gizmodo.com) 64
Less than a week after ProPublica found that TurboTax lied to taxpayers about its free filing program, "a new class action lawsuit against TurboTax maker Intuit claims the tax service breached its agreement with the Internal Revenue Service by intentionally obscuring its free filing service and charging qualifying taxpayers anyway," reports Gizmodo. From the report: The complaint was filed Sunday in a California district court on behalf of plaintiffs from three different states. TurboTax's free filing service is offered -- alongside programs from other tax companies -- in partnership with the IRS and is meant to benefit 70 percent of U.S. taxpayers with adjusted gross incomes of $66,000 or less. In TurboTax's case, the free filing service should be offered to those with adjusted gross incomes of $34,000 or less, per the IRS Free File Software page.
But according to the suit, TurboTax violated its agreement with the IRS by separating its free filing page from its primary service as well as by intentionally hiding the service from search engines -- and therefore qualifying taxpayers -- by altering its code, a discovery unearthed through ongoing investigations into TurboTax's practices by ProPublica. Additionally, TurboTax is accused of using language meant to lead taxpayers to believe that its primary service is free only to later charge them. When asked about the lawsuit, a spokesperson for TurboTax said in a statement: "We are committed to offering Americans the ability to file their taxes for free, and we're committed to the IRS Free File program. More IRS Free File returns have been filed using a TurboTax product than any other of the member companies -- including approximately 1.2 million returns this tax season. We look forward to working with the IRS and private industry to improve the Free File program and help it continue to grow."
But according to the suit, TurboTax violated its agreement with the IRS by separating its free filing page from its primary service as well as by intentionally hiding the service from search engines -- and therefore qualifying taxpayers -- by altering its code, a discovery unearthed through ongoing investigations into TurboTax's practices by ProPublica. Additionally, TurboTax is accused of using language meant to lead taxpayers to believe that its primary service is free only to later charge them. When asked about the lawsuit, a spokesperson for TurboTax said in a statement: "We are committed to offering Americans the ability to file their taxes for free, and we're committed to the IRS Free File program. More IRS Free File returns have been filed using a TurboTax product than any other of the member companies -- including approximately 1.2 million returns this tax season. We look forward to working with the IRS and private industry to improve the Free File program and help it continue to grow."
I'll say it again... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I'll say it again... (Score:5, Informative)
You mean the site that the IRS is forced to contract out (because Intuit lobbies Congress to prevent the IRS from running that directly)? They try hard to hide it (a site like this shouldn't be allowed to have a private domain registration for example), but it is run by... Intuit! They don't even have to run ads or try to milk users to pay for unneeded software, because they get guaranteed money from the IRS.
Re:I'll say it again... (Score:5, Interesting)
As an outside observer... How is a first world country like America this corrupt?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Only Burma, Liberia, and the USA don't use metric. No first world countries on that list. 187 countries just signed an accord to cut single-use plastic. Take a guess if the US signed. Every first would country is working to eliminate coal use, America is doubling-down on coal. Most Americans have no vote in presidential elections. If you're from most states, your vote is irrelevant thanks
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, TurboTax tried to trick me too, but as soon as they started bombarding me with bullshit I backed away, and went back to freefillableforms dot com.
The IRS (I'm assuming because TurboTax has some "friends" in Congress) uses language that makes it sound like freefillableforms is only for high income brackets, but anybody can use it.
I've already decided; if they take that away from me, I'm mailing it in on paper. I just have no appetite for extra online bullshit. No, I don't want to get cybered by your ma
Re: (Score:1)
You sound like a Trump supporter.
Re: (Score:2)
One possibility is DC, Puerto Rico, or Guam. Another is a US citizen living and working outside the United States. The USA is the only industrialized country that taxes overseas citizens' individual income.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Make some government employee do the math.
lol that's awesome you really stuck it to the man with that one yessiree you sure did alright /s
IRS.Gov address: (Score:2)
One of the links from that IRS page: Start Free File Fillable Forms Now [freefilefi...eforms.com], FreeFileFillableForms.com, NOT "freefillableforms dot com".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I got $32 from a class action against a company that was sending TXT messages in violation of the Do Not Call List.
You're just repeating this screed as a knee-jerk "anti-The-Man" blah-blah.
If an individual lost real money and wants to sue directly, they'll probably get more than from the class action. However, TurboTax is a high profit margin business, much higher profits and profit margin than the company that had to pay me $32. Members of the class who don't opt out might get much of their money back, may
Re: (Score:3)
Members of the class who don't opt out might get much of their money back, maybe even half.
And this is one thing wrong with Class Actions. The people affected by the action should get at least 100 percent of their money back, or a monetary compensation equal to whatever they were screwed out of. The offending company should pay for all lawyer fees.
Re: (Score:2)
That's probably not as reasonable as it seems when you consider the low bar to "prove" things in civil court.
The reality is that Courts are better at punishing the wrongdoer by costing them money than it is at making people whole. There are real reasons for this, and nobody has solved it.
The Court will move money around in the service of Justice. If you're willing to accept payment in Retribution, you can get your money's worth with a good enough legal team. But if you want cash, write a letter to Santa or
Never doubted it (Score:1, Offtopic)
I had an offer for an amazing package deal for home phone, cable, and internet that arrived faithfully for years as junk mail in the mailbox.
AT&T had a 200 pair line cut, and after tens of minutes of my life that I'll never get back, they offered to restore internet and phone service within 3 weeks. That seemed unreasonable to me, since I'm not living in Puerto Rico after a hurricane. Too soon?
Long story short, I contracted with the internet company that had been fluffing up my mailbox volume for a spec
Re: Never doubted it (Score:1)
Re:DUPE! (Score:4, Interesting)
https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/04/22/2139215/turbotax-uses-dark-patterns-to-trick-you-into-paying-to-file-your-taxes
Where the hell did journalistic integrity and research go, because I'd like to follow soon.
This story is about the class-action lawsuit brought on by what was discovered in the story you quoted.
Re: (Score:2)
I command all new developments to cease once a story has been reported! Nothing has happened in the last three weeks, NOTHING I SAY!
idiots (Score:1)
jesus fucking christ how can americans consistently fuck stuff up so badly by excessive deference to the Free Market?
Look.
It's utterly fucking obvious that the state should provide a free and comprehensive online filing service free gratis to all taxpayers which share exactly the same ruleset, calculation algorithms, data exchange formats.
How have you reached the point that regulatory capture of such an essential, utterly basic state interest as paying taxes, means you have lobbyists and congressmen activel
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
1000000000000000 thumbs up for this post. They create a tax code so incomprehensible that you need the "free market" to create an entire industry. Sounds like medical insurance. In sane countries, your tax bill is $0. Why? Because you had your taxes deducted from your paycheck all year long. End of the year tax time? I owe $0. I already paid it.
BUt amerikkkans are stupid enough to vote for trump, so there's no fixing it.
Re: idiots (Score:1)
Europeans elect cartoon villains!? Have you even heard of Donald Trump!?
Re: (Score:1)
How have you reached the point that regulatory capture of such an essential, utterly basic state interest as paying taxes...
The United States reached that a long time ago.
I mean let's face it they're pretty clueless. We are talking about the country that elected Ronald Reagan, then did it again.
Not ashamed enough by that they elected George Bush II then did that again. (No, it's true)
Regulatory capture is what the US government is for. George II even had the oil industry write his energy policy. Look it up, it's true.
Re: idiots (Score:1)
...a Finn. Who now chooses to live in America.
Re: (Score:3)
On the other hand, we could just eliminate all income taxes and close the IRS.
Or, you could do what the rest of the civilized world did 25 years ago (or more) and simplify your tax code to the point where expensive tax preparation software is not needed for individuals.
That removes a source of bribes for your corrupt elected officials, so won't happen.
Re: (Score:1)
Intuit TurboTax for making your machine unbootable (Score:2)
Anyone remember when Intuit TurboTax silently wrote to sector 33 as part of license activation. It did so without doing anything to confirm the sector was not already in use. If the customer uses a boot loader including boot sector based BIOS extenders (popular at the time to support hard drives larger than the system BIOS normally supported), then Intuit TurboTax would make the machine unbootable. Several customers lost full functionality of their computer and lost data when PC sellers demanded to do a
I gave up on Intuit a long time ago (Score:2)
Quicken is now subscription based (Score:2, Interesting)
So TurboTax, with their absolutely annoying "free, free, free....free free" commercials was lying. What a surprise that Intuit would do that.
Then you have Quicken which Intuit developed and sold off to H.I.G. Capital. They've now changed the software so that unless you pay a yearly subscription fee to use it, it will no longer connect to your bank and pull the transactions. So versions that we paid for and had installed stopped working unless we agreed to the yearly subscription fee.
When I ran into this
Re: (Score:2)
It is possible to hit the bank website and pull the daily transactions down in a file an import them but that is also made overly complicated.
"The old Quicken I flat out bought won't work now that there is a subscription service" is real sleaze. The suggestion above doesn't work for me: you can't even get the file directly from the bank and import it, if the download is in Quicken format: the software still refuses to import the download. There are converters for the Microsoft format banks also provide, but they don't seem too much less predatory than Quicken itself.
Has anyone come across a good solution for this, including switching to a whole
Re: (Score:2)
- Yo Grark
Re: (Score:2)
Yo Grark