Getting Worse Part 1: Intuit Routinely Lies To Customers To Avoid Paying Refunds For Tax Prep Work

It appears Intuit has decided to make things worse rather than better. Just after tax season, we discussed ProPublica's excellent research article on the extreme lengths Intuit had gone to keep its Free File service an unknown to the public. This service is the result of an agreement the top tax prep companies out there reached with the IRS. Essentially, by promising to allow members of the public that earn under a certain amount of money to use their services to file their taxes for free, the IRS in turn has agreed not to pursue its own free to file service. It's an extremely dumb deal for any number of reasons, one of which being how much more efficient it would be for the IRS to carry the weight here, given that it already has all the information most taxpayers need to file.

The other reason, as it turns out, is because Intuit has decided to behave pretty much as cynically as it possibly can. As we detailed in our previous post, the company engaged in a strategy coupling the buying of ads for Google searches and hiding the free to file via the robot.txt file. As a result, something like 3% of eligible taxpayers file for free using the system, while Intuit set up a layer of websites and landing pages all designed to direct the public to paid services, without ever telling them they qualified for free to file tax prep.

As a result of the ProPublica post, many who paid for these services called up Intuit and asked for refunds. If you thought that this public light on shady behavior would lead to an attitude adjustment for Intuit, you're sadly mistaken.

We've heard from 16 people who say they were denied refunds and told that the truly free version - Free File - is a government product that's not run by TurboTax. Ten others reported being told that ProPublica's stories were inaccurate, or that our coverage is "fake news" or "fictitious."

None of that is true.

It's quite hard to see how this isn't fraud. Having Intuit reps tell consumers that the free to file program is run by the IRS and not Intuit is a lie. Saying the program is "owned" by the IRS is another lie. Saying that the news organization that is currently airing all of this dirty laundry was so mistaken that a retraction was about to be run is a lie.

Laurie from Washington said she was told by a TurboTax agent that ProPublica was going to run a retraction. (Our stories are accurate, so there's nothing to retract.) Laurie was charged $130 by TurboTax. Her adjusted gross income was just $376.

An Intuit spokesperson previously said that no material provided to call agents included "derogatory terms about ProPublica."

Which may be technically true. However, it strains credulity for anyone to suggest that all of these stories are not the result of some centralized communication customer service reps have been instructed to use. It's far more likely that these are talking points given to reps as a way to try to stave off a wave of refunds for services that ought never have been rendered. That becomes all the more likely having seen some of Intuit's internal communications about this whole story (more on that in a separate post).

If true, that would be extremely stupid, considering that Intuit is already in legal hot water over all of this.

In a separate development on Monday, the Los Angeles city attorney sued Intuit and H&R Block under California's unfair competition law. The two suits, which cite ProPublica's reporting, demand that the companies pay penalties and restitution for deceiving customers.

"Low-income people without someone to stand up for them have not been able to take advantage of what should be a free service," City Attorney Mike Feuer said in an interview. "That's wrong."

It appears to be an open question just how deep a hole Intuit wants to dig for itself. As we'll see in the separate post, it appears those in charge still have shovels in their hands.