

It’s not clear when the payments will be made. ( Intuit did not admit any wrongdoing in the settlement.) More than 4 million people are expected to receive money as part of the settlement. The company reached a $141 million dollar settlement in May 2022 in a case led by New York Attorney General Letitia James and covering all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Ultimately, Intuit was found to have tricked millions of Americans into paying to file their taxes when they should have been able to do so for free. Internal documents previously obtained by ProPublica show these strategies were intentional on the part of Intuit and H&R Block.

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It added website code to block its Free File page from showing up in search engines and used manipulative marketing patterns to trick customers into paying for TurboTax even when they qualified for Free File. Intuit purposefully suppressed its own Free File product. That’s not all Intuit did to limit the scope of Free File. That’s why Intuit and other members of the industry spent millions through the years lobbying to preserve the Free File agreement, particularly the part that restricts the IRS from creating its own free filing system. Switching to such a system would devastate tax prep company profits. With a return-free filing system, the government fills out the tax forms with the information it already has, and taxpayers simply have to review the forms for accuracy. In return, the IRS agreed it would not create its own tax filing system that could compete with the tax prep companies.Ī government-run tax filing system, often known as return-free filing, is already a reality in many countries around the world. In 2002, Intuit, H&R Block and other tax prep companies signed a deal with the IRS to provide free tax filing services to millions of Americans. ProPublica has reported on Intuit and the Free File program since 2013.
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One of the biggest players is Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, one of the largest tax preparation software companies in the country. The story of the Free File program is long and twisting, and it can seem more like a fight against free tax filing than a fight for it. But this program has been historically underutilized, with just 4% of eligible Americans filing for free in 2021. Under the Free File agreement, Americans who make less than $73,000 per year should be able to file their taxes for free with one of the tax preparation companies that partners with the IRS. Series: The ProPublica Free Tax Guideįree, Fact-Checked Tax Information. This story was originally published by ProPublica.
