You are in the Warren 2020 Group. Only members who have selected Elizabeth Warren as their preferred Democratic presidential candidate are permitted to post in this Group.
Elizabeth Warren and Other Senators Call for Refunds and Investigations of TurboTax and H&R Block
Donate to Warren for POTUS with our DU ActBlue link here: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/duforwarren
In letters to the IRS and the FTC, the senators are seeking inquiries into whether the companies have deceived customers and violated restraint-of-trade laws.
by Justin Elliott and Paul Kiel May 3, 12:49 p.m. EDT
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom based in New York. Sign up for ProPublica’s Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox as soon as they are published.
Several senators led by Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., are calling for the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Trade Commission to investigate five tax software companies’ efforts to hide their truly free filing options from search engines.
“Hiding Free File from the public clearly aligns with the financial interests of these companies, because taxpayers are more likely to encounter and use their fee-based services, which are easily found through search engines,” the letter says, citing ProPublica’s reporting on Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, and H&R Block.
“For the same reason, it has likely increased prices for low-income consumers who should have had access to Free File but were understandably unaware of the specific IRS website that may have led them there.”
Congressional staff found that the websites of three other companies that have signed on to the IRS Free File program — TaxSlayer, TaxHawk Inc.’s FreeTaxUSA and Drake Software’s 1040.com — had used similar code to hide their truly free offerings from Google and other search engines.
FULL story: https://www.propublica.org/article/elizabeth-warren-and-other-senators-call-for-refunds-and-investigations-of-turbotax-and-h-r-block
= new reply since forum marked as read
