Tax prep software companies are absolute two-faced crooks. They’re duplicitous scum that lobby Congress to make sure their software stays needed despite the fact that the government already has all the information they need to tell us what we owe, and then show up in commercials with a smile, telling us that they’re here to help. I don’t care how easy to use your software is, or how charismatic the fake CPA on your homepage looks, your software shouldn’t exist and you deal in stress and pain.
So, anytime one of the companies behind the big tax preparation software like TurboTax takes an L, I receive currents of joy through my spine. Today, my spine is absolutely VIBRATING reading that Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, just paid out $141 million in a settlement for deceptive business tactics. Even better, the thing that got them in trouble is the exact sleazy base of their entire business model.
What did they do? Well, they offered a version of their software called TurboTax Free Edition. Unfortunately, they kinda violated, like, the absolute number one rule of free stuff: it can’t cost money. It was only after doing hours of not only work, but MATH that users would come to the final step, where Turbotax Free Edition informed them how much it was going to cost to file their taxes.