“With the Free File programme surpassing its founding goals of e-filing and free tax preparation, we are unable to continue in the programme and deliver all of the benefits that can help people make more money, save more money, and invest for the future,” stated to the blog post.
According to a blog post on Intuit’s website, the business will discontinue the Free File programme after the end of the tax season in October in order to “offer more financial benefits and empower Americans of all income levels to take charge of their finances.”
According to ProPublica, the corporations prevented free versions of their software from appearing in search engine results, making them more difficult to discover online.
Credit score monitoring business Credit Karma was acquired by Intuit for $7.1 billion in December 2020. The purchase was scrutinised by the Department of Justice, which was concerned about possible antitrust issues.
Readers may recall that Intuit and H&R Block were discovered to have deceived taxpayers into paying to file their taxes in a series of ProPublica stories.
For the Free File programme, the IRS collaborates with the Free File Alliance, a nonprofit group of tax software companies that provide no-cost tax filing services. Intuit said in a blog post on its website that the program’s “restraints” are one of the reasons it’s abandoning Free File, which is accessible to 2020 filers with adjusted gross income of $72,000 or less.
Later, the IRS modified the Free File programme, deleting a clause in the agreement that prevented the IRS from developing its own online filing system to compete with the software companies’ offerings.
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