[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-...