Intuit began in the 1980s as an accounting software company focused on helping people with their bookkeeping. Over time, as ProPublica reports, the company, like the other giants of Big Tech, cultivated an image of being not just good at what it did, but good, period. The company stresses values above all, urging employees to “deliver awesome” and pursue “integrity without compromise.”
Intuit’s QuickBooks accounting product remains a steady moneymaker, but in the past two decades TurboTax, its tax preparation product, has driven the company’s steadily growing profits and made it a Wall Street phenom. In 2019, nearly 40% of U.S. taxpayers filed online and some 40 million of them did so with TurboTax, far more than with any other product.
But the success of TurboTax rests on a shaky foundation, one that could collapse overnight if the U.S. government did what most wealthy countries did long ago and made tax filing simple and free for most citizens.
For more than 20 years, Intuit has waged a sophisticated, sometimes covert war to prevent the government from doing just that, according to internal company and IRS documents and interviews with insiders.
The centerpiece of Intuit’s strategy has been the Free File program, launched in 2003. Under the terms of an agreement with the federal government, Intuit and other commercial tax prep companies promised to provide free online filing to tens of millions of lower-income taxpayers. In exchange, the IRS pledged not to create a government-run system.
Until recently, when the IRS’ inspector general launched an audit earlier this year, which is ongoing. Other investigations and litigation followed, ranging from class-action complaints, alleging that consumers had been deceived by Intuit’s tactics, which the company denies.
Read the full story from ProPublica about Intuit’s fraught history.
