Free Turbo Tax commercials have been everywhere the last few years. Now, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul says Intuit, the owners of Turbo Tax, are going to pay $141 million to customers across the country who were deceived or mislead into using the alleged “free” tax-filing service.
Intuit, which offers the TurboTax tax-filing system, will suspend TurboTax’s “free, free, free” ad campaign and pay restitution to nearly 4.4 million taxpayers, according to a press release from Raoul’s office this week.
A Federal Trade Commission investigation was inspired by a 2019 ProPublica report that found the company was using deceptive tactics to steer low-income tax filers away from federally-supported free services which they qualified for and toward its own products.
Here in Illinois, approximately 130,000 people are set to receive a portion of the settlement.
Intuit will provide restitution to consumers who started using the commercial TurboTax Free Edition for tax years 2016 through 2018 and were told that they had to pay to file even though they were eligible for the version of TurboTax offered as part of the IRS Free File program.
Representatives of Intuit said in a blog post on Wednesday that they admitted no wrongdoing, but are simply trying to put the matter in the past.
Consumers are expected to receive a $30 check in the mail for each year they were deceived into paying for filing services with Turbo Tax.