The Federal Trade Commission ruled in a final order and opinion Monday that TurboTax, the popular tax filing software, engaged in deceptive advertising and banned the company from advertising its services for free unless it is free for all customers.
By running ads for “free” tax services that many customers were not qualified for, the tax filing software violated the FTC Act and deceived consumers, the agency said.
The FTC had first sued Intuit, TurboTax’s owner, for its deceptive advertising in 2022. The FTC staff alleged most tax filers couldn’t use the company’s “free” services — “such as those who get a 1099 form for work in the gig economy, or those who earn farm income.” TurboTax advertising their products as free misled those customers, according to the FTC.
Oh yeah totally free, just go ahead and put in all your info… Oh, looks like your at the last step and have spent a bunch of your time filling everything out. Oh darn! Look at that, you need to do something very basic that 99% of people need to do? Yeah that will be 75 bucks please.
TurboTax is nothing more than a “Legal” scam that pulls a bait and switch to steal money from people.
You don’t pay until you file for a lot of those services. I filled out the tax info for the past 2 or 3 years to see what refund estimates and what not each software came up with. Then I filed with the one that was cheapest since they pretty much all output the same thing. For me, FreeTaxUsa was the cheapest. I think its free for federal tax filing, but 10 or 15 bucks to file the state taxes.
I do this too. It doesn’t take long and I shop around, because I honestly don’t trust the calculations given.
Only once in my 15 years did I compare three tax software services and all three gave me dollar values that actually align.
I think people just need to see it to believe it if they’ve become accustomed to one brand of tax software. I find that they often have the exact same order of data entry. So just opened up 2 or 3 browsers and fill them all out at once. If your tax situation is simple, it goes pretty quick if you have all of your tax documents on hand.