Intuit is going all-in in its lobbying efforts to protect its lucrative tax filing business at a time when Congress is threatening it.
US law guarantees taxpayers earning less than $69,000 a year can file their taxes for free. Unfortunately, Intuit and other companies often make it difficult for users to find free filing options. Lawmakers wrote a letter to Intuit CEO Sasan K. Goodarzi in April 2022, demanding answers about what they called the company’s “Free File scams.”
Intuit’s problems got worse in September 2022 when the Inflation Reduction Act set aside $15 million to help the IRS develop an easier platform for taxpayers to file for free.
According to OpenSecrets, Intuit has responded by spending a whopping $3.5 million in 2022 lobbying Congress. That sum is more than the company spent any previous year. Intuit claims that a government-run tax preparation service represents a conflict of interest.
“Unquestionably, a government-run tax preparation system that makes the tax collector the investigator, auditor, enforcer, and now also the preparer, is a conflict of interest,” Goodarzi told Business Insider.
What Goodarzi conveniently omits, however, is that government-run tax filing services work very well in almost every other developed country in the world. In fact, taxpayers in many other countries look with amazement at the state of the US tax industry.
It’s probably a safe bet that Goodarzi’s comments are more self-serving than a demonstration of genuine concern for the American taxpayer.
