TurboTax Is Using A 'Military Discount' to Trick Troops Into Paying to File Their Taxes (propublica.org) 90
"Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, created and promoted a 'military discount' that charges service members who are eligible to file for free," reports ProPublica, in a story co-published with The Military Times:
In patriotism-drenched promotions, press releases and tweets, TurboTax promotes special deals for military service members, promising to help them file their taxes online for free or at a discount. Yet some service members who've filed by going to the TurboTax Military landing page told ProPublica they were charged as much as $150 -- even though, under a deal with the government, service members making under $66,000 are supposed to be able to file on TurboTax for free...
To find TurboTax's Free File landing page, service members typically have to go through the IRS website. TurboTax Military, by contrast, is promoted on the company's home page and elsewhere. Starting through the Military landing page directs many users to paid products even when they are eligible to get the same service for no cost using the Free File edition...
The New York regulator investigating TurboTax is also examining the military issue, according to a person familiar with the probe.
The authors of the article tested the software by entering tax information for a military household in Virginia that was eligible for free filing. 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."
To find TurboTax's Free File landing page, service members typically have to go through the IRS website. TurboTax Military, by contrast, is promoted on the company's home page and elsewhere. Starting through the Military landing page directs many users to paid products even when they are eligible to get the same service for no cost using the Free File edition...
The New York regulator investigating TurboTax is also examining the military issue, according to a person familiar with the probe.
The authors of the article tested the software by entering tax information for a military household in Virginia that was eligible for free filing. 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."
Military Tribunal (Score:4, Interesting)
The Board of Directors should be put up in front of a firing squad. They are disgusting piles of shit, with not a single redeeming quality.
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How do you even pay $159.98 into Turbo Tax? I used it for my taxes and it cost me about $40. My taxes are too complex for the free option.
Only way I can see to get to $159 is to ask for a human CPA to review your filing and then buy the audit insurance where they go to court for you. But even all of that doesn't add up to $159.98. I think there are some other options where they overnight confirmations of filings and stuff like that. All of these are clearly labeled as being optional and you have to opt-in
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It was free to file my Federal taxes. I paid $40 for the piece of software that made it much easier. You don't have to use a piece of software. You can go down the the Post Office and get the forms for free and fill them out manually.
Paying a CPA to look over your taxes is nothing to do with filing them. Buying legal insurance against an audit also has nothing to do with filing them. These are optional activities you are choosing to do. You are not required to have a CPA look at them.
Since my state wanted $
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I genuinely don't know why people pay turbotax ... ever. Or H&R block. They're crappy companies that pretend to explain stuff that's far too complex (yay government!) for us normal humans to understand.
Go pay an accountant. Depending on where you live it'll run you $150-$300. More if you have investment properties or a business of course.
But...that's an actual professional who's worked this job as their career for years at a minimum, decades more likely. They know the ins and outs. They aren't min
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The Board of Directors should be put up in front of a firing squad. They are disgusting piles of shit, with not a single redeeming quality.
I'm sorry, but which massive American capitalist corporation were you not referring to here?
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I hope this is a swing of the pendulum, so to speak, that the nation has had all the corruption it can stomach and the pendulum is already starting to swing back. When the conservatives allow screw overs to happen even to the military, for which they profess such love, you have to wonder how much longer this can go on. That's really pushing it in the direction of "biting the hand that feeds you."
I've worked with active military my entire professional career. To an overwhelming degree, they've consider the lip service to be "look at how patriotic we are for mentioning the military, or just plain virtue signaling. The business is doing this for the business. And it's been worse the past decade or so.
They also figure that these businesses would throw them under any convenient bus if the business could make more money off doing that.
Re: Military Tribunal (Score:2)
Eh, it depends. Most of the big chain businesses will have a 10% off discount or the like, which really is just lip service. Occasionally, though, some owner of a business or even a chain franchise will offer a significant discount that really means something.
I remember a posting I had ... there was a fast food chain with at least 3 stores in the local area. 2 of them had a "10% discount after 5 pm on the second day after a full moon" type of thing going. The third one had a 50% discount across the boar
TurboTax games their reviews, too (Score:5, Interesting)
Ran into this a couple of years ago: If you posted a positive review on their feedback page, it showed up immediately. If you said something negative, it took a couple of days to appear. And of course, the page displayed the newest comments first.
This way, they could claim they allowed disparaging comments, and could reference some if needed. But they effectively hid the reviews that pointed out problems to most people - and one of the major problems that people were pointing out was bait-and-switch issues.
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If you posted a positive review on their feedback page
"I cannot recommend this product too highly."
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I went back to paper filing this year. (Score:4, Informative)
It was an effective strategy for eliminating the ever-increasing online filing fees:
1. I figured my taxes with the online version of TurboTax, and double-checked using Taxact.com.
2. Then I downloaded the 1040 .pdf form from the IRS.
3. Transferred the numbers manually into the form (which took a minimal amount of time), printed it, and mailed it off to the IRS.
I filed for the cost of a stamp.
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You also could’ve filed online for free using the free fillable forms, linked from the IRS website. Exactly like filling out the paper forms, except it’s on your computer. No income limits and no e-file fees.
Would’ve saved you the cost of a stamp, anyway.
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It is free to file your Federal taxes from within TurboTax. It is only the states that charge.
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We shouldn't even have to file. (Score:1)
All those tax documents we get in the mail, the IRS gets them too - and they calculate your tax liability.
As a matter fact, in Obama's first year or so, there was a bipartisan bill to have the IRS do your taxes, mail you out completed forms, and if agreed, you signed them or filed your own.
Intuit, H&R Block and others lobbied Congress to put an end to it.
Then the IRS made a deal with that if they provided free service to those making under $66,000 - for everyone - then the IRS wouldn't provide their own
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This is the very model of "rent seeking". Lobby the government to create a burden on the citizen, then make money dealing with the burden that the company itself created.
Less obvious and easier to do than getting a law passed that says "everyone must send me $35" but equally profitable ($35 is Intuit's revenue divided by the number of tax returns filed).
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All those tax documents we get in the mail, the IRS gets them too - and they calculate your tax liability.
As a matter fact, in Obama's first year or so, there was a bipartisan bill to have the IRS do your taxes, mail you out completed forms, and if agreed, you signed them or filed your own.
That is how it is done in Norway [skatteetaten.no] now, and most do it online.
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It's the system (Score:2, Flamebait)
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Yep, the order of the rich and powerful to dictate all terms. Contracts are written by teams of lawyers. Unless you have your own team of lawyers you are simply submitting to the dictate of those who do.
Re: What does the contract say? (Score:2)
Yeah, "blame the victim" is "caveat emptor" for the modern cretin.
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I use TaxCut, which is similar scummy software, but they seem just a little less dickish than TT. Now that HR Block owns TC, they seem to act a little more legit, but it's a different slice of the same loaf of shit.
Them charging another $20-25 to file state returns is just bullshit. They offer "free e-files", but, surprise! The state filing isn't included in that deal. Schmucks. So, I print and send in the state for free, since it's only 1 or 2 pages. FUCK THEM and their "ADDITIONAL CHARGES". And the
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Market Dominance (Score:3)
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I switched to H&R Block software, still very affordable and just as easy to use.
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That's a very good point. When a company has achieved massive dominance in its market, its has to compete with its earlier products that led to its success. Adobe's recent warning [engadget.com] about possible "infringement" for using its software older than two versions ago is a good example, or when MS "encouraged" Windows 7 users to upgrade to 10.
Another option for a company that has achieve massive market dominance is to expand into other markets. Again, look at Microsoft. Once they had the operating system and office
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Nice! I was starting to think I was the only one who remembered getting shafted by Intuit about 10 years ago. Switched to TaxAct and never looked back. I can't recall exactly what it was back then, but I've never thought about EVER using another of their products, so it must have been pretty bad.
Always thought it was just a matter of time till their true colors shone through again. Was not wrong on that either.
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If they're eating crayons they've got you beat. Apparently you just jam them up your nose.
the IRS should be abolished, (Score:2, Informative)
the fish rots from the head down and the government and their support system stinks like a dead fish
Re:the IRS should be abolished, (Score:4, Insightful)
The system is complicated because the government uses the tax system to try to get society to act in the way the government wants them too. If the government wants people to save for retirement instead of offering savings accounts for them and deducting money the government makes a change to the income tax legislation. The US government wanted to encourage home ownership so they changed the income tax to make mortgage interest deductible but to balance it out you pay tax on the sale of your primary house. In Canada when the federal government wanted children to become more active they didn't spend a lot of money building sports facilities. They changed the tax code so that sports fees were deductible.
We won't go to a flat tax because the government likes the ability to meddle in our lives and changing the affordability of things via income tax is an easy way to do that.
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Flat tax might generally mean more taxes for everyone. If you want to keep deductions and have lower long term capital gains and so forth, then it means things continue to be complicated. The "flat" part really does every little at all to simplify things, figuring out the rate is the easiest part of paying taxes in the US.
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The point of the flat tax is that it gets rid of all of the deductions, or at least the vast majority of them. I'm saying that most governments aren't going to give up their ability to influence society so easily. Even if a government did bring in a flat tax with most or all of the deductions gone I would be that it wouldn't be long before the temptation to make changes with tax law would mean that some small deductions would start creeping in. In 50 to 100 years you would be back to the same mess as what y
Re: the IRS should be abolished, (Score:2)
If you're Canadian you should probably be aware that - despite all the minor deductions which have been added over the years - doing your personal taxes is still insanely simple. This year I completed and submitted my taxes in about 20 minutes using my smartphone while lounging by a pool in a different country. And it was completely free, though I did throw a voluntary $5 donation to the people who created the service.
Business taxes get more complicated of course, but if you're running a business you can
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because paying income taxes has become so complicated that all these for-profit paid services are necessary just to pay taxes, something is very wrong with this system.
the fish rots from the head down and the government and their support system stinks like a dead fish
Nope. There's no reason to abolish the IRS here. There are automated systems in place to both calculate and check taxes. The problem is the IRS isn't legally allowed to compete with the accounting industry thanks in great part to the likes of TurboTax's lobbying.
The IRS is just fine, what they should do is be forced to provide a tax portal like they do in every other sane country and pre-fill your tax information for you.
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because paying income taxes has become so complicated that all these for-profit paid services are necessary just to pay taxes, something is very wrong with this system.
I agree with you, but it’s a difficult problem to solve since conservatives and liberals have very different ideas regarding what a simple and fair set of tax rules should look like. People don’t just want to simplify the tax structure, they also want to simultaneously change the rules to conform more closely to their political predilections - one way or the other.
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Pray that Quicken Loans doesn't hold your mortgage (Score:5, Interesting)
My wife and I had the misfortunate of having our mortgage sold to Quicken Loans. For the first three months it was one nonstop sales call after another from Quicken reps trying to get us to refinance. We finally got a manager on the phone and made it clear to him that we had no interest in refinancing, and that if Quicken didn't stopping calling our home phone number, then we would start call blocking them.
Even then, my wife and I would still get occasional calls on our cell phones from random Quicken reps trying to do a cold sale. The last one I got was from some idiot who called me at 8 a.m. and wanted us to refinance our remaining $30k mortgage (which we paid off a year later).
To top it all off, after we paid off our mortgage we got a call from yet another rep who wanted to know why we were leaving Quicken Loans, and asking what she could do to keep us as a customer. When I told her, "We paid off our mortgage. Why would we need to remain your customer?" she was caught completely by surprise. She had no idea what our loan status was. All she knew was that our account was being closed.
Quicken Loans must be a pressure cooker of a place to work, with reps being forced to make sales at any cost, no matter what. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see another Wells Fargo-style scandal come out of that company.
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What a heartwarming, feel-good story. Just in time (Score:2)
Selective comment publishing. (Score:1)
Full price for gum? (Score:2)
That dog won’t hunt, Monsignor.