Intuit to refund $141m to low-income TurboTax users
TurboTax owner Intuit has agreed to pay all 50 U.S. states a total of $141m to resolve claims that the online tax preparer duped low-income Americans into paying for services that should have been free.  Under the settlement, Intuit will also suspend TurboTax’s “free, free, free” advertising campaign, which lured customers with promises of cost-free tax preparation only to direct them to profitable options, New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led the states’ probe, said in a statement. Ms. James’s office led a multistate investigation into Intuit’s misleading advertising after reporting by ProPublica found that the company deceived customers who were eligible for free tax services and instead rerouted them to enroll in paid versions. One out of every three taxpayers in the United States qualified for the company’s commercial product, “TurboTax Free Edition,” according to Ms. James’s office, compared with 70 percent of taxpayers for a free federal program operated by the Internal Revenue Service. The TurboTax product was only free for some: taxpayers who had “simple returns.” Through its partnership with the federal program, called the Free File Program, Intuit allowed selected low-income people and members of the military to file their taxes through TurboTax at no charge. But the company deliberately employed “several deceptive and unfair trade practices” to drive customers away from participating in the federal program, including blocking the landing page for its free service from appearing in search engine results.