The main purpose of this goingconcern article is to pan a TurboTax ad that will be aired during the 2020 Super Bowl. I agree the ad is pretty bad. Anyway, it seems the author couldn't resist another pot shot at TurboTax and its maker Intuit. Relying on ProPublica's deceptive and biased reporting about free filing income taxes (see this blog May 2019), the reporter says: "But that ad time cost is chump change for Intuit, maker of TurboTax and staunch proponent of charging millions of customers for tax filing services they should’ve gotten for free."
Should've gotten for free? Huh? Perhaps could have, but should have by what standard? That if a filer fails to heed the caveats, plows ahead anyway, and later learns that he or she doesn't meet the criteria for filing free, that Intuit and TurboTax should allow him or her to file free anyway? That Intuit put a copy of TurboTax on an IRS site that some lower income folks could use for free wasn't enough goodwill?
By the way, I recently learned something else about using the IRS's Free File site. Suppose the following. You proceed to use one of the software programs within the IRS's suite and later discover that you don't meet the eligibility criteria. The eligibility criteria aren't fool-proof and you might err. What happens? You are directed back to the IRS's Free File site to try another product -- which might get the same result. That's it; no other options. If you had selected, say, TurboTax, you could not be redirected to a paid version of TurboTax on a TurboTax website. That prohibition is the IRS's. Suggesting a pay version of TurboTax would be akin to advertising. Moreover, wherever you go requires starting again from scratch for input. The data you had entered up to the point of failure cannot be exported to another website. Would you be upset or pleased with the IRS?
In all its reporting about TurboTax, ProPublica never wrote about this feature of the IRS's Free File site. That's a double standard. If a person tries to file free yet fails to meet the criteria for doing so starting on a TurboTax website, ProPublica feels the need to bad-mouth TurboTax's maker. If a person does likewise starting on the IRS's Free File site, ProPublica is mute.
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