The FTC ordered Intuit to pay $141 million in May 2022 to compensate consumers who were deceived by TurboTax's "free" advertising. Intuit was required to participate in the IRS Free File program, which offered genuinely free tax filing to low-income Americans. Instead of promoting this free product, TurboTax deliberately hid Free File pages from search engines using code that blocked Google indexing. Users searching for "free TurboTax" were steered to a different "TurboTax Free Edition" that was only free for the simplest returns -- then hit with fees mid-filing when they discovered their situation required an upgrade. The FTC found this was deliberate: Intuit designed the product flow to hook users with "free" and charge them after they had invested time entering their data. Simultaneously, ProPublica revealed that Intuit spent over $25 million lobbying against the IRS offering its own free filing system. Intuit fought to keep taxes complicated, then charged Americans to navigate the complexity.

A Congressional investigation (The Markup / Senator Elizabeth Warren, November 2022) revealed that H&R Block embedded the Facebook Pixel on its website and app, sending tax filing data to Meta. Data transmitted included: income levels, filing status, refund amounts, dependents, and scholarship amounts. This data was sent to Facebook as users filed their taxes -- meaning Meta received real-time financial data from millions of Americans doing their taxes on H&R Block's platform. Google Analytics was also embedded, sending behavioural data to Google. H&R Block treated tax return data -- the single most sensitive financial document most Americans produce -- as advertising data. The Facebook Pixel was designed to improve ad targeting. Your income and refund amount improved Facebook's ability to target you with ads. You filed your taxes. Facebook learned what you earn.

A ProPublica investigation revealed that TurboTax deliberately made its IRS Free File product hard to find in search engines while promoting paid versions. Intuit used deceptive design to steer eligible free filers into paid products. The FTC ordered Intuit to stop its deceptive practices in 2022, and Intuit agreed to pay $141 million in restitution to 4.4 million Americans who were tricked into paying for free tax filing.