Warning: TurboTax 2009's Fraudulent Consent to Steal Your Income Tax Data

TurboTax 2009 ^ | 1/24/2010 | The Taxman

[catnipman]

I wanted to alert everyone here that TurboTax 2009 is going to attempt to grab your income tax data for unlimited nefarious use by themselves and their partners. Here's how:

I've sent the following information to the IRS via mailed Form 3934A, emailed via complaints@tigta.treas.gov, to ripoffreport.com and to the Journal's Walter Mossberg:

January 24, 2010

Internal Revenue Service Fraud Department
Internal Revenue Service
Fresno, CA 93888

To Whom It May Concern,

Each year Intuit comes up with a new ripoff scheme for TurboTax. I think they must be doing it for publicity purposes at this point, because no one can be that stupid, since they get caught each year and have to issue an apology.

This year's scam is a bogus "Consent" form at the start of the process that looks as if the IRS requires that it be signed. In fact, this consent form allows Intuit and their partners to paw through your tax return to decide which of their money-making ripoff products and services that they want to try and trick you into buying later on.

This consent form is deliberately obtuse and is deliberately designed to confuse and trick the users of TurboTax 2009 into granting practically unlimited consent for Intuit and their partners to utilize all information on one’s tax return for almost any purpose.

I urge you to immediately order Intuit to issue an automatic program update that eliminates this consent form as well as the underlying purposes for which it is being presented.

I’ve attached the following:

1. Exhibit A: A screen capture of the consent form from TurboTax 2009. Also, I’ve placed this online at:

Consent Form

2. Exhibit B: Supposedly the same form when printed out from TurboTax 2009, though it is quite different.

3. Exhibit C: The web page on Intuit’s web site that offers an explanation of the consent form. Notice that this explanation is substantially different than the explanation in the consent form itself, and actually admits to the actual purpose of the consent form, namely it’s needed solely for the purpose of Intuit using your tax return information for the purpose of selling you additional products and services. The link to this page is:

Intuit Web Page

Sincerely,

An Outraged Taxpayer

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Exhibit C:

[catnipman]

Just trying to help look out for the folks here!

BTW, the only way to prevent authorizing Intuit to take your income tax data is to check the "Don't Show Any Options" box.

[Batman11]

Thanks for the info!

[Chickensoup]

I didnt really understand it when I received it. I tried to undo it but it would not let me I had to hit it to go forward.

[benewton]

Ditto: passing it on to the Boss, who’s also in charge of tax prep.

[discostu]

I’m not seeing what the problem is. They’ve had similar things in the app forever, that’s part of why people buy TurboTax is to have it look through their tax data and present options for this year, and even recommendations to reduce your tax liability in the future. The form itself is pretty straight forward and doesn’t look at all like it comes from the IRS.

[luv2lurkhere]

I installed Turbo Tax and checked “show me all options”. Fortunately I haven’t gotten into it yet so it’ll be easy to uninstall and reinstall checking the “show no options” box.

Really appreciate the info!

[Abigail Adams]

Thanks! Just ran across the form yesterday.

[Nervous Tick]

What’s the big deal? Just don’t authorize them to do it. The wording was clear to me: you DO NOT have to authorize them, so DON’T.

How hard is that?

[catnipman]

I installed Turbo Tax and checked “show me all options”. Fortunately I haven’t gotten into it yet so it’ll be easy to uninstall and reinstall checking the “show no options” box.

You don't need to uninstall. You can uncheck the consent box by getting to the "Let's Review Your Personal Info" summary page. At the very bottom of the page there's an "Edit" button for "Change Refund and Payment Settings". This takes you to the original consent form where you can check "Don't Show Me Any Options".

[BobL]

I’ve always managed to do my taxes without help from these clowns...but thanks anyway.

[catnipman]

I’m not seeing what the problem is. They’ve had similar things in the app forever, that’s part of why people buy TurboTax is to have it look through their tax data and present options for this year, and even recommendations to reduce your tax liability in the future. The form itself is pretty straight forward and doesn’t look at all like it comes from the IRS.

This is not what the consent is for. The consent is for Intuit to paw through your data for its own commercial purposes to decide if it wants to sell you additional products and services.

[ExpatGator]

Bunp to show the wife (who does our taxes).

[discostu]

They frequently in the past have used TT to push you towards Quicken, their e-file and their storage so again what’s the big deal. This is how TT has been working for over 15 years (that’s when I started using it).

[USMCPOP]

I used to use Turbo Tax, until I found Demo-TAX. Now I just click on the “I forgot to file” button on the splash screen and fugghetaboutit.

[RushingWater]

The reason I use Turbo Tax is to give me all the options? If I don’t check that, will the software not optimize my return??

[6SJ7]

I used TaxACT last year and liked the web-based system.

[musicman]

bookmark!!!

[freespirited]

As soon as I saw that screen I checked no consent and moved on. So far nothing fishy has happened.

[mtrott]

I’m sure it will still show you all your deductions and optimize your return. What the consent is for is to allow their marketing people to view and analyze your return and have some of their other companies try to sell you more products.

[Sudetenland]

Uhhh...gee, I guess maybe you need to read before you click on anything. How unusual. Imagine that, you can't just click on everything that pops up.

This is a big nothing.