The IRS and providers of free software for filing income taxes recently signed a new agreement that is hoped will increase usage of said free software on the IRS's Free File website. I wrote about it here February 9.
ProPublica is still not satisfied and continues its smear campaign against Intuit, maker of TurboTax, with this article. As usual it has plenty of deception, half-truth, and use of double standards. As usual the IRS or non-savvy people hoping to file for free bear no responsibility for what ProPublica feels is unjust. All blame goes to the software providers, especially Intuit and TurboTax.
Before saying more about the article and to clarify, there are two free versions of TurboTax. The "Free File" version is the one accessed via the IRS's Free File website, which also hosts several competitor products. The "Free Edition" version is not part of the IRS's Free File program. If somebody tries the former and discovers they fail to qualify, they will not be offered a pay version of TurboTax. They will be directed back to the IRS Free File website to start all over again with a different product. If somebody tries the latter and discovers they fail to qualify, they will be offered a pay version of TurboTax capable of handling their situation.
The following are some assertions in the article and my comments about them.
1. "Intuit does not advertise its Free File offering on Google."
Why does ProPublica feel Intuit should pay to advertise something that will produce no revenues for Intuit? The IRS gets the tax revenue, so why shouldn't the IRS pay for all advertising of the Free File program? Why does ProPublica believe Intuit should pay to advertise a website that hosts several products that compete with TurboTax? Furnishing the software costs Intuit time and money, and some people get to use it for free. Why is ProPublica so ungrateful and mean-spirited?
2. "Google searches for 'free tax filing' and other similar phrases still yield ads for a plethora of products such as TurboTax’s 'Free Edition'. ... TurboTax’s version of Free File — the one that doesn’t charge customers anything — typically won’t appear until the second page of search results.”
The Free Edition doesn't charge customers either. Anway, so what? If a person searches for "free tax filing," shouldn't he or she be informed that TurboTax’s Free Edition exists? Or is ProPublica out to prohibit Intuit from advertising? When is ProPublica going to try to prohibit the IRS from advertising its Free File program?
3. "Intuit places its ads strategically in searches for “IRS” and “free file,” among thousands of related search terms."
This baffles me. What is the author's point? Anyway, I did that search. The first non-ad search result was www.irs.gov › filing › free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for-free. So Intuit is not making it difficult to find the IRS Free File website. The first non-ad search result shown in the screenshot in ProPublica's article is to https://apps.irs.gov/app/freeFile/. So again Intuit is not making it difficult to find the IRS Free File website. Where's the beef?
Additional comments
Nowhere in this article does ProPublica tell readers how to find the IRS's Free File website, which is where you will go if you click on the link in that first non-ad search result.
Again ProPublica doesn't complain about a person not passing the criteria to use the Free File version and later finding "a dead-end street" after wasting a lot of time entering data. However, ProPublica loudly protests somebody not passing the criteria to use the Free Edition version and not "finding a dead-end street" since they can switch to a pay version.
Using the IRS's Free File link, the second option says "Income above $69,000" & "Free File Fillable Forms." Is a person required to have income above $69,000 in order to use said forms? No, but ProPublica hasn't accused the IRS of false advertising.
Addenda 2/23/2020
Justin Elliot has led ProPublica's smear campaign against Intuit, maker of TurboTax. He got this article published by HuffPost. The title, 'Congress Is About To Ban the Government From Offering Free Online Tax Filing. Thank TurboTax.' is both misleading and false. The IRS already offers 11 ways to file free online now, and Congress isn't trying to eliminate them. There are 10 software options in the Free File program. The 11th is the IRS's own Free File Fillable Forms. As said above, a person is not required to have income above $69,000 in order to use said forms.
Again Elliot fails to mention VITA,TCE, and AARP, which prepare millions of tax returns for free and online.
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