Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, has engaged in a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) creating its own online system of tax filing like those that exist in most other wealthy countries.

[16] The programming error was reportedly fixed, but as of 2012 TurboTax offers no option to download a data file directly from the financial institution.

By 2006 that offer has been limited to free federal online tax preparation and e-file for taxpayers whose adjusted gross income is $28,500 or less (or $52,000 for those in the military) and those 50 or under.

[20] On January 21, 2009, TurboTax received considerable public attention at the Senate confirmation hearing of Timothy F. Geithner to be the United States Secretary of Treasury.

Intuit responded by releasing a statement saying: "TurboTax, and all software and in-person tax preparation services, base their calculations on the information users provide when completing their returns.

[23] However, TurboTax's "free file program" page (https://turbotax.intuit.com/taxfreedom/) contains specific HTML tags (noindex, nofollow) which block search engines from indexing it.

[26] The 2003 version of the TurboTax software contained digital rights management that tracked whether it had previously been installed on a computer by writing to sector 33 on the hard drive.

Intuit "opposes IRS government tax preparation", particularly allowing taxpayers to file pre-filled returns for free, in a system similar to the established ReadyReturn service in California.

[30][31] In its 2012 Form 10-K, Intuit said that "We anticipate that governmental encroachment at both the federal and state levels may present a continued competitive threat to our business for the foreseeable future.

[32] On February 5, 2015, Intuit sent a second email apology to current and former customers regarding the decision to remove specific schedules from the Deluxe and Premium versions.

[33] In an article by Brian Krebs on February 15, 2015, it was reported that Intuit Inc. temporarily suspended the transmission of state e-filed tax returns due to a surge in complaints from consumers about refunds already claimed in their name.

[34] In a later article on February 22, 2015, Krebs reported that it was alleged by two former employees that Intuit knowingly allowed fraudulent returns to be processed on a massive scale as part of a revenue boosting scheme.

[36] On March 29, 2022, the Federal Trade Commission announced that they would take legal action against Intuit, the parent company of TurboTax in response to deceptive advertising of its free tax filing products.

[41] In January 2024, the FTC ordered Intuit to fix its misleading ads for "free" tax preparation software - for which most filers wouldn't even qualify.