Wednesday, July 17, 2019

ProPublica Targets TurboTax Again #3



Oh my. It’s more deceptive reporting from ProPublica, along with 100% blame for Intuit (maker of TurboTax) and 0% blame for the tax filer.

In ProPublica’s narrative Kristan Obeng gets and deserves no blame, despite the following:
1. she waited until the last minute to file
2. she ignored or didn’t understand the caveats for using the Free Edition
3. if she had heeded the caveats, she would not even tried using the Free Edition
4. she plowed ahead anyway, only to find a roadblock
5. rather than seek out other alternatives that would have let her file for free – Free File Alliance, VITA, AARP Tax Aide, the IRS’s Free Fillable Forms, do a paper Form 1040 – she took the easy road of following Intuit’s prompt, which is not a command, to use a pay version of TurboTax.

Substitute “ProPublica writers” for “she” in #2 - #4 and #2 - #4 describe perfectly what the ProPublica writers have done with every example in their articles in order to try to vilify Intuit. And again, their narrative omits mentioning any of the alternatives in #5. And, of course, the IRS gets no blame for eliminating Form 1040A and Form 1040EZ starting with the 2018 tax year.

Edit: I put the above as a comment on ProPublica (linked above).

Previous posts about ProPublica and TurboTax:
ProPublica Targets Free File Tax Preparers
ProPublica Targets TurboTax





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