TurboTax Hell
Intuit also continues to use “dark patterns” — design tricks to get users of its website to do things they don’t necessarily mean to do — to ensure that as many customers as possible pay, former employees say. A marketing concept frequently invoked at Intuit, which goes by the acronym “FUD,” seeks to tap into Americans’ fear, uncertainty and doubt about the tax filing process.
- Inside TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans From Filing Their Taxes for Free – ProPublica
By Gregg Wall (4-16-2022)
It’s that most wonderful time of the year.
No not Christmas, year-end holiday, or even the Big Bunny. Time to do your tax filing, boys and girls. Some militantly hate paying taxes and resent the filing, itself, as an invasion of privacy… some heeding Justice Holmes' admonishment, like myself, don’t resent paying taxes so much. However, many of us resent the complexity of the tax code that requires us to pay two sets of taxes, one to Uncle Sam and a second tax to the tax preparation gods: TurboTax (TT) and H&R Block.
Some of us are double fortunate. I pay taxes to the US government and as a dual citizen, do a second filing in Canada. And I have to tell you, filing taxes in Canada is both a walk in the park, compared to the US, and also feels better, as the Canadian government does so many good things for its citizens. The same really can’t be said about America, given the rigged nature of almost everything in the United States. The idea of paying taxes to sponsor endless war, Wall St bailouts, and America’s tax dodging oligarchy is such a bummer.
But I digress, because today’s writeup is on the abject misery that accompanies my annual use of the TurboTax experience. America is a land increasingly dominated by monopolies and cartels, oligopolies, and monopsony, and tax preparation services are no exception. TurboTax meets many of the hallmarks and notoriety surrounding America’s utility state and monopoly economy. Let’s take a look, via a quick breakdown.
First off, the software is garbage… likely practiced in the dark arts of the airline industry. That is to say, the tax prep software is so abjectly miserable to use, the poor taxpayer is likely to upgrade services and pay more just to mitigate the hell that is TurboTax. The airlines, of course, mastered the arts of providing the most miserable experience possible, and then charging fee after fee to get passengers to continuously upgrade.
And Americans see this in utility after utility in America, where customer service is de minimis, that is your problem, Dear Consumer. This year, I upgraded from mid-tier service to full service, and instead of swearing at my computer for six hours, I spent five to six days attempting to get TurboTax to do its job and deliver my return.
TurboTax preserves its monopoly by spending millions and millions lobbying to perpetuate a service that in many countries is done by the government for free. And there’s the p-word again, privatization. Whereby, the state cedes property or services to the private sector, under the pretense that the private sector can do it better, cheaper. Which we all know by now is a lie. Privatization is one of the biggest scams going, tax preparation is no exception; and to further my claim, one only need to look at a billion or more TT recently poured into stock buybacks. Last I checked, the IRS doesn’t have a profit load, do stock buybacks and dividends, but is grossly underfunded and understaffed, by design, by our highly corrupt congress.
In short, TT defines and exemplifies everything the neoliberal, monopoly economy has come to stand for: rent seeking; privatization; concentrated economic power; a highly corrupt congress using big biz and the stock market to launder public monies and kickbacks (in the form of campaign contributions, buybacks/dividends, and lobbying); the lack of competition and therefore, exploitation of both the consumer and labor; the misallocation of time and resources; a dearth of innovation; an attack upon the economy itself with monopolistic profit taking; and catastrophic wage & wealth inequality.
The allegations of bait and switch, against TurboTax, have become both so undeniable and well-founded that the FTC was recently forced to take up the case. That is, TT promises free services; but again, so many find the software is so abysmal, and the taxpayer is so fearful of running afoul of the IRS, that they all too often are forced to upgrade, and/or are denied the free services advertised. And the TT user must navigate a vast web of services, as they exit the software and finally file, not unlike exiting through the gift shop at SeaWorld.
TurboTax is a tech company, and what do all tech companies do but gather data. And if customer data is not being put to use by TT to further its own interests, handed over to the US government and the surveillance state, it’s likely data that its being sold off to third parties (although TT denies this).
Lousy services, lousy software, rent seeking, millions in corruption paid to congress, failed privatization, data gathering, a billion dollars allocated to stock buybacks for a service that is free in other countries, a billion for stock buybacks instead of employee pay and customer service… another predatory duopoly. Hmmm, you could say TurboTax is monument to everything that is wrong with the US economy, today.
But there’s something more and I would be highly remiss if I did not mention this. It’s the employees. Like so many utilities in America, the employees are dependent upon this insidious monopoly, and as result, the employees and consumers face a malign power. The employees I encountered at TT were outstanding, hardworking, diligent, courteous, and of course, engaged in a courageous fight against a software that absolutely sucks and must burn countless hours of their time. That’s time employees can never recover. Time spent away from family, children, and friends, all in the service of greed and lousy software.
I know... TurboTax employees, who want to remain employed, cannot speak out, but I can on their behalf.
So much of antitrust law is focused on the consumer. It’s why Silicon Valley and TT likes to provide ‘free services.’ See, aren’t they grand, they are helping out the consumer. Except, we all know that monopsony and monopoly have crushed labor and workers, and when labor and workers are crushed, so is the consumer.
And therein lies the paradox, TT is evil on every level: It preys upon the consumer; it subverts and corrupts democracy; with a complicit congress, it transfers wealth and taxpayer dollars to a cadre of elites; it’s part of a cabal of monopolies that destroys the economy with a predatory, private sector tax; and TurboTax literally holds its hand to the throat of labor … ensuring that accountants, moms and dads working for TurboTax and H&R, have few alternatives but to work for the Great American Nightmare.
Which finally, brings us to the answer.
To wit, if the US government is going to allow unregulated monopolies and utilities to exploit the consumer and labor -- all too often in industries that are as dated, and nonessential, as the buggy whip -- the least it can do is provide American labor with guaranteed employment and a full suite of basic services (so as to give Americans a fighting chance against oligarchs and monopolies that crush the life out of them, and their children, on a daily basis).
Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2022
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