Intuit & Turbo Tax: Girlboss, Gaslight, Gatekeep

Why does doing taxes suck so much? Because Capitalism!

Jun 07, 2024

Over the past 20 years, the lovable dweebs at the IRS have been on a quest to make filing personal taxes free and easy. They say America should be like other countries, where the government sends you a pre-filled tax return and all you have to do is sign-off. Seems like a no-brainer, right? Like what kind of deranged psychopath wouldn’t want that?

Enter Intuit, maker of tax preparation software Turbo Tax, and their disgruntled band of lobbyists. Their entire business model depends on you being afraid to screw up your taxes. So they bribe lawmakers to over-complicate tax laws, threaten the government into underfunding the IRS, and run dubious misinformation campaigns alleging that free tax filing is somehow… racist?

The nefarious knuckleheads at Intuit would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for the determined efforts of Propublica journalists. They joined forces with the unlikely heroes at the IRS, and from a muggy basement office in Washington they stood up to Big Tax and won.

We <3 the IRS and you will too after this episode!

Pictures from the episode

Tom Proulx and Scott Cook (founders of Intuit)

Image: Virginia Boyd

1984: Quicken for DOS launches as the initial product for Intuit — and one of the first fintech products, ever! I mean this was like the first at home accounting software - check out this ledger!