THE TURBOTAX TRAP

[BOP]

TurboTax Uses A “Military Discount” to Trick Troops Into Paying to File Their Taxes

TurboTax Uses A “Military Discount” to Trick Troops Into Paying to File Their Taxes

Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, created and promoted a “military discount” that charges service members who are eligible to file for free.

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Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, created and promoted a “military discount” that charges service members who are eligible to file for free.

We tested TurboTax Military and TurboTax Free File using the tax information of a Virginia-based Navy sailor and his graphic designer wife with a household income of $53,000.

The filing experiences had just one major difference: TurboTax Military tried to upgrade us or convince us to pay for side products six times. We declined those extras each time. Finally, the program told us we had to pay $159.98 to finish filing.

And that “military discount”? All of $5.

In the Free File version, by contrast, we were able to file completely free.

 

[David]

There's more to the story:

This week, we reported on how TurboTax uses deceptive design and misleading advertising to trick lower-income Americans into paying to file their taxes, even though they are eligible to do it for free.

There’s a new wrinkle: It turns out, Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, is deliberately hiding the truly free edition — TurboTax Free File — from Google Search.

Intuit has done that by adding code on its site telling Google and other search engines not to list TurboTax Free File in search results.

TurboTax Deliberately Hid Its Free File Page From Search Engines

The makers of TurboTax as well as H&R Block promised the IRS to offer free filing for many Americans. But they have kept Google from seeing it.

www.propublica.org

Plenty of people covered the story:

turbotax hid free site from search engines - Google Search

And if you really want to see what these people are made of, read this:

Congress Is About to Ban the Government From Offering Free Online Tax Filing. Thank TurboTax.

A bill supported by Democrats and Republicans would make permanent a program that bars the IRS from ever developing its own online tax filing service.

Congress Is About to Ban the Government From Offering Free Online Tax Filing. Thank TurboTax.

A bill supported by Democrats and Republicans would make permanent a program that bars the IRS from ever developing its own online tax filing service.

www.propublica.org

And if my reading comprehension skills are adequate in this case, the compromise was that they would offer the "free" version. I guess the fine Democrats and Republicans never saw the problems highlighted above coming? I believe that many people refer to this as crony capitalism.

Crony capitalism is an economy in which businesses thrive not as a result of risk, but rather as a return on money amassed through a nexus between a business class and the political class.

Crony capitalism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org