[LeifCarrotson]

> They try and make money by selling you audit protection, trying to get you to put your refund on their debit card, etc.

This is exactly the problem. They're not nearly 100% free. It's only free if you manage to navigate their byzantine, dark-pattern-ridden series of questions that effectively ask "Do you want to use the results of the last 12 pages you entered and try to save with TurboTax Deluxe or delete that half hour of work?" and confusingly named products like "Guaranteed Free", "Free Edition", "Start for Free" (all not actually free).

TurboTax makes more than a billion dollars every year. Of course they'll want to squash competitors who threaten to harm that cash cow.

[smsm42]

This years TT version actually makes it quite hard to get to Deluxe from Free edition if you get there from e.g. IRS site. Basically what happens is when you get to the end, it tells you "Surprise! Your return does not qualify for the free version!" but doesn't offer you any immediate way to upgrade. There's a sequence of clicks which allows to do that (took me about 30 mins to find it) but it's not very trivial and rather hard to discover.

Once you are in the paid versions, the upsell push is relentless. But not in the (actual) free edition, at least that was my experience this year.

[pensatoio]

I’m not sure it’s fair to give them the benefit of the doubt on “this year’s performance” when they’re only doing it due to the lawsuit.

[smsm42]

I'm not giving them any benefits, I am just describing what I have seen. I have no idea why they did that, I'm just saying that was my experience - since not everybody is going to bother clicking through all tax return forms to see what happens at the end.