TurboTax was reported to the Deceptive Design Tip Line over its advertising of a “Free Guaranteed” service for lower-income taxpayers. According to the report, when a test profile of a house cleaner and cashier earning less than $66,000 attempted to sign up, they were instead led towards paid products, with a difficult path to reach the free version. The report notes that the original investigative research was conducted and reported by ProPublica.
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TurboTax: Tricked users into paying for “free” tax filing
“TurboTax advertised a “Free Guaranteed” service for lower income taxpayers. However, when they staged a profile of a “house cleaner and cashier” who made less than $66,000 to sign up for the product, they are led to paid products and created a difficult path to find the free version. Original investigative research was conducted and reported by ProPublica in April 2019.”