Intuit is an embarrassment of a tech company. Instead of innovating in software, they've invested infinitely more in lobbying to keep tax-filing complex and in creating new and innovative dark patterns to obscure their (federally mandated, btw) free product.
They are not a tech company. They are a regulatory capture company that uses tech to extract from the general public what should be free. The code and platform are the performance art to enable the rake.
Edit: Meant to scope this comment solely to TurboTax. Replies correcting me are well deserved.
No, they are a tech company, they produce software for their main product.
Like a lot of companies, tech and not, they use their power and resources to keep their position.
The difference is that their actual competitor is the government. But that's also a big part of why private healthcare is way too expensive in the US, for worse results than other places.
It's a game of semantics. The other commenter's meaning is that a "tech company" would produce valuable tech that wouldn't otherwise exist. Intuit uses tech to do the opposite. McDonalds uses tech too, but they aren't a tech company.
That's what I'm saying though, they don't even produce a product. They produce legislative influence to create a money collecting trap. Turboxtax isn't a "product" per se. That's like calling the mafia security guards because they force you to pay protection money. Many countries don't even require filling out tax forms. You just sign and pay.
From comments in threads like this I think most people would be shocked that Intuit makes the largest segment of their income from business customers, not individual consumers.
The “business customer” is a slight misnomer because Intuits definition of this segment includes “Small Business and Self Employed”. Quickbooks accounts for thr largest share
For consumer segment TurboTax still drives 30% of their entire revenue.
They do own Mint, but they are killing it and trying to get customers to switch to Credit Karma. Intuit bought Mint but never really put much development effort into it beyond the bare minimum. Like too many financial tracking things which are "free", the user was the product on Mint that its advertisers wanted. I switched to Monarch which is paid and has some people from the original Mint team behind it.
Free government-provided tax calculators and online filing are an existential threat to Intuit. I think that the business should not exist (or should be scaled down to a fraction of its size, as an accountant's tool), but can you blame them for trying to block the deathblow?
Intuit also produces Quickbooks -- which actually is SMB accounting software, and used internationally.
As most of their revenue is from businesses who wouldn't easily be able to free-file, I wouldn't be surprised if Intuit's lobbying to prevent a free tax filing offering from the government was causing them more harm than good.
And now QuickBooks is also a bank? Offering checking accounts? I suspect they’ve just partnered with a real bank to do so but the brand confusion is off the charts.
I imagine Quickbooks is adding more features as part of an upsell. The business loans by paying invoices upfront was a bit of a ZIRP policy though (now interest rates to SMB's likely would be prohibitively high, ~15%).
>they've invested infinitely more in lobbying to keep tax-filing complex
I always feel the need to point out that anger at this is misplaced. Intuit is a business lobbying on behalf of itself like countless other businesses do. If the result makes you upset, you should be upset at our political system and the politicians who are willing to sell out the country for whatever those lobbyists are pushing. It is those politicians who are supposed to prioritize the good of the country, not Intuit or their lobbyists.
The difference between those three groups is that the politicians are the only ones not doing the job expected of them.
Lobbyists are supposed to lobby on behalf of whoever pays them.
Businesses are supposed to advocate for the interest of themselves, their shareholders, and their employees. It would be verging on incompetence for a business to ignore a political debate that would effectively destroy the business overnight. Intuit lobbying on its behalf is our system working as intended. If you have a problem with that (which you should), your problem should be with the system and not Intuit.
Politicians are supposed to work for the betterment of their constituents and they clearly aren't in the case of tax prep. They deserve a majority of the blame above any other group because they are the ones failing to do their job.
I don’t think that’s a meaningful distinction. A lot of people would say lobbyists shouldn’t even exist as a profession. Whether they are “just doing their job” begs the question of whether the job should exist.
Businesses can lobby for their own self-interest without taking such a staunch anti-consumer stance. Technically, you're not wrong. But Intuit happens to own MailChimp, QuickBooks and Credit Karma beyond TurboTax.
There's no reason they shouldn't be able to find a way to remain a profitable business between most of what they own. To go above and beyond with such an anti-consumer perspective with regards to filing is absolutely egregious.
Put simply (or reductively, take your pick) - there's "advocating for the interest of their business" (nods head) and "advocating for the interest of their business" (shakes head).
Do you get upset at criminal defense lawyers who defend people who are obviously guilty (i.e. by getting clear and convincing evidence disqualified because of a procedural error?)
Or, would you say something like "The outcomes are not perfect but that's how the system works and stays as fair as possible for everyone"?
> Do you get upset at criminal defense lawyers who defend people who are obviously guilty ...
This is an obvious Straw man[0] fallacy.
Intuit is a corporation engaged in lobbying efforts in order to retain and/or expand its market-share and not an individual needing representation in a criminal indictment.
Unless your position is that Intuit corporate officers should be criminally prosecuted, which, if that is the case, I apologize for my misunderstanding and can see your point.
The system requires criminal defense attorneys to lobby for their client, even if this results in objectively bad outcomes in specific situations.
Similarly, the system requires that anyone (including shareholders or employees of companies) be able to communicate with their political representatives about political policy. Even if sometimes this results in bad outcomes in specific situations.
A corporation can represent the interests of hundreds or thousands of people - investors, shareholders, employees, customers (who depend on the product), etc.
The larger corporations, even more so.
But still, the Congressional office buildings are open to the public. Anyone can walk in and present their case. Yes, of course a senator cannot make as much time to meet with the millions of individual citizens as they can with the 500 individual Fortune 500 companies. I don’t think this defeats my argument. An individual citizen is objectively less important than a company involving tens or hundreds of thousands of citizens.
Corporations may touch a large number of people but those people are not a representative sample. Further, corporations are not lobbying for the interests of that large group of people, they are lobbying for the interests of the corporation, whose interests may incidentally and temporarily align with the groups you mentioned. The interests of the corporation only align with those of the people you mention insofar as those are in line with maximizing profits. However, this completely ignores the externalities of maximizing profits, such as those to the environment.
More broadly, a country whose politicians represent the interests of corporations is no longer a democracy. Democracy is for people. Corporations are not people. They are abstract legal entities wired to maximize profits. The fact that they are composed of people is immaterial, since they do many things contrary to the interests of those people all the time.
The disconnect occurs when you realize that the issues businesses lobby for don't always benefit their own employees, nor are they only ever lobbying just to stay alive as a business.
In point of fact, Intuit's lobbying in this very instance also negatively impacts their own employees.
Edit: A generic example to further drive the point home would be oil companies lobbying against environmental protections. Such moves only benefit the business and directly harm everyone, including their own employees.
Edit 2: And then there are all of the instances where businesses have lobbied against changes to labor laws, wages, etc. that would objectively improve the lives of their own employees...
Most things are circumstantial and nuanced, not black and white. So, no, I usually do not get upset at that. Note how I said "can" rather than saying "must be" or something more absolute like that.
And the idea that things are "as fair as possible for everyone" in this particular (read: Intuit) scenario is laughable at best.
