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by freeeee 2530 days ago
This is basic logic.

The "Freefile" product is only supposed to be free for lower income people, so when Intuit misdirected everybody to the (non-free) product which they named "Free", they exclusively harmed lower income people, as the higher income people were never entitled to free filing.

(that entitlement is due to an agreement with the IRS, where the IRS agreed to limit competition in the tax filing industry in return for the development of free file products).

edit: also note that it is absolutely not an accident that Intuit used these names which make it almost impossible to talk about their non-free product which is named Free, and their actually free product which is named Freedom and Freefile.

1 comments

That's a good point, and a valid one, but not the central thesis of THIS article. (ProPublica has previously written articles on that.[1])

[1] "But, as ProPublica has been reporting, Intuit has steered eligible customers away from the truly free version, aggressively marketing products that are called “free” even though many customers end up paying."