[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-...