The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has filed a lawsuit accusing Intuit, the parent company for TurboTax, of false advertising.
Apparently, the tax company told people they offered “free” tax filing, but then required many to pay for the service.
In its lawsuit, which was filed Monday in California, the FTC claimed TurboTax repeatedly advertised its product and service as free, but in actuality, only “simple” tax returns qualify as free.
The FTC also accused Intuit of changing what “simple” means, to get more customers who would be excluded from free services, WSBTVreported.
The FTC referenced TurboTax’s advertising as deceptive, pointing out its ad campaign called “Free, Free, Free, Free,” which had at least six different advertisements using only the word “free.”
In its complaint, the commission said that those customers who clicked a button saying “File for $0″ on the company’s website were not informed that they were ineligible for the “freemium” version of the site until they had already spent time adding data into TurboTax.
“In truth, TurboTax is only free for some users, based on the tax forms they need. For many others, Intuit tells them, after they have invested time and effort gathering and inputting into TurboTax their sensitive personal and financial information to prepare their tax returns, that they cannot continue for free; they will need to upgrade to a paid TurboTax service to complete and file their taxes,” the complaint read.
Intuit’s executive vice president Kerry McLean told Reuters it plans to fight the FTC’s allegations. “While it is disappointing that the FTC chose to file this lawsuit, we look forward to presenting the facts in court and are confident in the merits of our position.”
