Why people hate TurboTax so much ? Is it because its a monopoly (or) does it uses any predatory practices (or) kill other companies that tries to compete.
Disclosure: I used TurboTax to file this year's taxes and kind of like their UI and ease of use (for top $ of course):|
All of the above. Yeah TurboTax is great because they make it easier to do something nearly everyone hates to do and doesn't understand. So most people don't care about why Intuit is a terrible company because TurboTax is their only option and it works well.
Intuit has excessively lobbied the US government to prevent simplification of the tax code, they struck a deal to offer a free option in return for the IRS not developing their own alternative, and then deceptively hid access to the free option so that users are tricked into purchasing it anyway.
The other comments provided a great overview, but I would really recommend read ProPublica's reporting about them [1]
Some very brief highlights:
- They use dark patterns and other trickery to prevent people from filing for free (the vast majority of Americans can file for free via IRS free-file), instead directing them to the "free" up-sell laden product
- Lobbying against literally anything that would make filing taxes easier or cheaper. It doesn't have to be this way (and it's not in many countries), but it's how they make their money.
Not only do they kill other companies, but they kill the government's ability to compete. As is mentioned in other threads, many countries don't have this tax filling non-sense at all. The government just says: Here's what we're basing your taxes on; let us know if there are any mistakes.
It's absurd to spend ones time and money to file taxes only to have the government punish you because you didn't get the right answer.
People don't like TurboTax becauseof their advertising and lobbying tactics. They target income levels that can file for free online and spend money 'lobbying' the government to allow the practice to continue. That being said, I use Turbo Tax and love it. The clean UI made filing take 90 minutes despite having several property and other transactions this year.
Why people hate TurboTax so much ? Is it because its a monopoly (or) does it uses any predatory practices (or) kill other companies that tries to compete.
Disclosure: I used TurboTax to file this year's taxes and kind of like their UI and ease of use (for top $ of course):|