FTC bans TurboTax from advertising 'free' services, calls deceptive advertising

Re:FTC bans TurboTax from advertising 'free' services, calls... by bubblethink on Monday January 22, 2024 @09:17PM (#39098701)

Hah, saw that you edited the url. These government naming schemes are designed to fail. Why do they pick these absolute terms like "free" when there will clearly be some new thing that will be better? I'm waiting for the next version of REAL id, a realer id.

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Re:FTC bans TurboTax from advertising 'free' services, calls... by daswerth on Monday January 22, 2024 @09:32PM (#39098856)

For real. I did some reading to try to understand the rationale. I _think_ Free File is a general program which lots of "services" can participate in, including TurboTax. Direct File is akin to (but maybe not actually the same as) a IRS offering in the Free File program.

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Re:FTC bans TurboTax from advertising 'free' services, calls... by whakim on Tuesday January 23, 2024 @02:00AM (#39100387)

As engineers I feel we should show a little bit of sympathy for difficulties involving naming ;)

In all seriousness though, Free File pretty much does what it says on the tin (allows low-income taxpayers to file for free); it has existed since 2003; and it has been pretty successful all things considered (Intuit and H&R Block's best efforts notwithstanding). I think it's a reasonable name.

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