| https://www.propublica.org/series/the-turbotax-trap Propublica is the definitive outlet for reporting on this stuff. They've spent years digging into bills and the millions that Intuit and H&R block spend lobbying around tax reform. > “For a decade proposals have sought to create IRS tax software or a ReturnFree Tax System; All were stopped,” reads a confidential 2007 PowerPoint presentation from an Intuit board of directors meeting. The company’s 2014-15 plan included manufacturing “3rd-party grass roots” support.[0]
Also of note was how after they conceded to making a government-mandated (bad, hamstrung) free filing software alternative for those making below $39k, Intuit blocked it from Google with robots.txt: https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-deliberately-hid......Which is important because if you start from anywhere else on their site, they'll begin hurling upsell dark patterns at the user, despite proclaiming "free" in copy in many places. Right now, if I google "file taxes for free usa," the page "TurboTax Free Edition"[1] ranks higher – which is not the same software. And, of course, they do not link to the actual FreeFile page from there.[2] Edit: turns out that Intuit will no longer be offering that government-sponsored Free File alternative after this year (disclosed in a blog post titled "Accelerating Technology Innovation," hah)[3]. Good riddance. The US Treasury Inspector General found that only 2.4% of taxpayers (2.5 million) actually used the free file software, whereas 5.5x that number could have filed for free, but were likely charged for it instead: > TIGTA estimates that more than 14 million taxpayers met the Free File Program criteria and may have paid a fee to e-file their Federal tax return in the 2019 Filing Season.[4]
[0] https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f...
[1] https://turbotax.intuit.com/personal-taxes/online/free-editi...
[2] https://freefile.intuit.com/
[3] https://www.intuit.com/blog/news-social/accelerating-technol...
[4] PDF: https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2020reports/2020... |