The FTC is investigating Intuit over free file tax returns

The Federal Trade Commission is actively investigating Intuit, maker of the popular TurboTax tax preparation software, according to a new report by ProPublica. The case was revealed in a public court filing, in which Intuit sought to limit the scope of the investigation.

The investigation centers on TurboTax’s “Free File” product, offered free of charge to most Americans in exchange for the assurance that the IRS would not develop a competing product. But a string of ProPublica investigations found that Intuit had made Free File difficult to find, in one case adding code to prevent it from being indexed by search engines. As a result, many users who were eligible for the free TurboTax filing may have been diverted to paid products.

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