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.
We can be upset at lobbyists for pushing things that they know aren't in the best interests of consumers.
We can be upset at businesses for wanting to take advantage of consumers for their own gain.
All of these can be true at the same time.