From the article:
Sasan Goodarzi, the CEO of Intuit, says the company’s efforts to make its free tax-filing software harder to find on Google were part of the software giant’s commitment to educating taxpayers.
In an 11-minute video sent to Intuit employees, Goodarzi said the company was trying to help consumers by steering them to “educational content” instead of TurboTax’s free filing website.
The company promised the IRS it would offer a free option to tens of millions of taxpayers earning less than $34,000.
Responding to our reporting, which shows that Intuit, H&R Block and other for-profit tax software companies were steering low-income customers to their paid products, Goodarzi said the company’s marketing practices “had been misinterpreted to signal that we were trying to hide the product we offer in the IRS program. That is inaccurate.”
Source: Intuit CEO in Internal Video: Hiding Free TurboTax Was In “Best Interest of Taxpayers” — ProPublica
I hate the tax lobby with a particular passion. The reason the IRS and the US government doesn’t just automatically give you a bill, or a tax return is that the tax lobby has put an enormous effort into keeping themselves relevant. Our government officials are easily bought by lobby dollars.
You can file for free, but these companies hid this option and made poor Americans pay anyways. They re the worse.
Second Hand Outrage 