[tynpeddler]

This is the important part of the article:

> Consumers are expected to receive a direct payment of approximately $30 for each year that they were deceived into paying for filing services. Impacted consumers will automatically receive notices and a check by mail.

It looks like TurboTax is being required to return the money they fraudulently obtained, but they're not even required to pay interest or any additional restitution or punitive damages. It's definitely disappointing and a minor miscarriage of justice.

Edit: Two things I want to clarify from my original comment. First, I wasn't able to find pricing info from the years in question so I went from what I remembered as their lowest pricing tier which I think was $30. Second, I use the term "minor miscarriage of justice" as a comparison to the Sackler BS which was a gross (as in disgusting) miscarriage of justice.

[burkaman]

Also important, from Intuit's statement:

> As part of the agreement, Intuit admitted no wrongdoing

I hate this and I don't understand why the government always agrees to it. Isn't an admission of wrongdoing more valuable than a tiny fine? Why do they always accept this kind of settlement? Isn't it both the right thing to do and better politics to keep the case going until the corporation at least has to admit it broke the law?

[fshbbdssbbgdd]

There are two reasons to take a settlement:

1. You’re not sure if you will win.

2. You don’t want to pay the cost of fighting.

If the two sides roughly agree on the likelihood of victory, it makes sense to settle so both can save legal costs. You can multiply the probability of victory by the spoils and make that the settlement amount. The costs and risks of fighting give some more incentive to come to a compromise even when the odds are unclear.

Sometimes settlements do include an admission of wrongdoing. The fact that this one didn’t is a suggestion that TurboTax had some strength in the negotiation. Either the case was not a slam dunk, or the states had some kind of other constraints. Maybe they judged that negotiating for more money was more valuable than an admission of guilt (which is easy to argue, since the consumers harmed will get utility from the money in their bank account).

[1123581321]

not admitting wrongdoing scopes the settlement to only that transaction (exchange of money in this case.)

Admitting wrongdoing can lead to other cases (because your admission can become evidence), so it’s a much more expensive settlement for the person or company, possibly expensive that it’s not worth settling.

[ac29]

> I hate this and I don't understand why the government always agrees to it

Taking things to trial is very expensive, and you the taxpayer is paying that cost. The company is probably never going to admit wrongdoing even if found guilty.

[seaourfreed]

The economy is rigged. Intuit made $5.7 billion in revenue (2021) and the fine is only $141m.

I agree with you. Miscarriage of justice. Like a bank robber only having to return the money as the "fine" and zero punishment after.

[tynpeddler]

I don't think Intuit's total revenue is relevant to this discussion. The most relevant number is how much money did they make off this little scheme which seems to be much less than their total revenue. I didn't see this value in the article, nor was I able to find TurboTax's pricing model for the years in questions so I went off (my very fuzzy) memory that their lowest tier was about $30.

[ASalazarMX]

When you ignore a red light, the fine is not calculated based on whether you had an accident or not. For a fine to be significant, it has to exceed the profit made from the crime, otherwise you'll keep running red lights until you actually crash or run someone over.

Given its profits, Intuit could easily survive a fine of one billion, and would think twice about implementing similar frauds in the future. Behaving ethically would be in the best interest of their stockholders.

[bushbaba]

Yet, the fine for running a red light is not proportional to a persons earnings (in the us).

It’s like parking in places that could lead to a ticket. If you only get a ticket once every 100 times you park. It might be cheaper and more convenient to park illegally.

The system has to up enforcement or up the pain of non compliance. Else you encourage people to take the rational choice of breaking the rules.

[koolba]

> When you ignore a red light, the fine is not calculated based on whether you had an accident or not. For a fine to be significant, it has to exceed the profit made from the crime, otherwise you'll keep running red lights until you actually crash or run someone over.

Sure but that would still be based on the profits of the scheme, not any other unrelated revenue. In your traffic light analogy it’d be like billing the ticket based upon how many miles per year you drive rather than the speed limit or how fast you were going.

[ASalazarMX]

I can't remember which, but there are countries where traffic fines are scaled to your income, which would be a great way to fine companies.

[Schroedingersat]

If we're giving them the rights of people, then just fine them by time with the same effect as if they were a person.

Median wage is $12/hr and a company with $50bn/yr revenue does something that would normally be $120? $250 million.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

Finland is most often given as an example of this.

[karaterobot]

> For a fine to be significant, it has to exceed the profit made from the crime

I think their point is that we don't know how much profit Intuit made from the crime (at least, I couldn't find it in the article). The assumption is that tricking people into paying to file when they didn't have to is not 100% of their revenue.

[DangitBobby]

That was understood. The point is that the fine is punitive and should be a large portion of their revenue to make it clear that bad behavior is the opposite of profitable and continued bad behavior may lead to bankruptcy.

[bogomipz]

>"I don't think Intuit's total revenue is relevant to this discussion. The most relevant number is how much money did they make off this little scheme which seems to be much less than their total revenue."

So following this logic, unethical behavior, deceptive practices and bogus advertising is less important than the percentage of total revenue gotten from those practices? That sounds like a talking point straight out of the Intuit PR book. Without considering total revenue, a fine like this is just the cost of doing business for Intuit, a footnote on an otherwise wonderful corporate earnings statement.

Do you also suppose that $30 was always the true cost to the victims? There's no shortage of people that live hand to mouth who would have been negatively impacted by being duped out of that $30.

And just for historical perspective this is a company that signed an agreement with the IRS back in 2002 to provide "Free File" to American tax payers in exchange for the IRS not creating a competing free file platform.[1]. Not only did they fail to honor their agreement but they actively engaged in subverting it. What's the fair price for abusing the public trust? It's not unreasonable to think that some of that $30 was actually used by Intuit to pay lobbyists to ensure those same duped people continued to have no viable free filing option available to them.

[1] https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/2002-free-online-electronic-...

[wmeredith]

> As part of the agreement, Intuit admitted no wrongdoing

It was literally just a cost of doing business. They did nothing wrong*

*According to our justice system.

[Mathnerd314]

The right comparison is yearly income - $2.062B. From the 10K, TurboTax and Mint are 37% of revenue. Mint is probably negligible, so the income from TurboTax is $0.67B a year or 5x the fine.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

That’s if you’re equating one year of income vs 3 years of behavior. The fine is for 2016-2018 in which we can safely assume Intuit made at least 1.5B on TurboTax. So the income made commensurate to the fine is closer to 8x.

[chaostheory]

This is one of the reasons why trust in public institutions have plummeted. This is also the reason for the rise of both the far right and far left.

[thomascgalvin]

It's better than a coupon for free tax preparation next year, which is sort of what I expected.

[dr_orpheus]

True, I feel like coupons are a way that a lot of these go. I remember my $14 Ticketmaster coupon (or something I don't remember the exact amount) that had an expiration date on it.

Some of the class action suits also require you to be the one to put in effort to receive your money, so the fact that TurboTax is just mailing everyone a check seems better than others. And "better" doesn't necessarily mean "good". Still not a fan of TurboTax or the US tax filing system.

[the_only_law]

Given the recent trend of incompetence leading into borderline scams I don’t blame you.

[rgbrenner]

Is that a full refund? The cheapest Turbotax product is $60 + 50 for state.

[tynpeddler]

I assumed that TurboTax has already adjusted their pricing tiers in response to the lawsuit since my vague memory of many years ago is that the lower tier was about $30. If someone can give more accurate pricing information for the effected years that would be cool.

[ineedasername]

But no punitive damages. If I personally deceived people to this extent then reimbursement would be the least hurtful penalty. I'd be looking at jail time. The least the FTC could do is levy treble damages.