The U.S. government is suing Intuit, alleging that the owner of the widely used tax filing software TurboTax is lying to customers by claiming the product is free and then steering them toward paid services and products.
"In truth, TurboTax is only free for some users, based on the tax forms they need," FTC said in court papers."For many others, Intuit tells them, after they have invested time and effort gathering and inputting into TurboTax their sensitive personal and financial information to prepare their tax returns, that they cannot continue for free; they will need to upgrade to a paid TurboTax service to complete and file their taxes.
Until 2021, TurboTax offered a fully free option through the Free File program, which it ran in partnership with the IRS. But the software maker continued to steer taxpayers who were eligible for Free File into paid upgrades, the FTC said. Between November 2018 and April 2019, Intuit also used code to hide its Free File software from search engines, according to the government.
Intuit pushed back against the FTC's complaint on Monday, saying it would"vigorously challenge" the suit.
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