Intuit Convinces Politicians That E-Filing Should Go Through Them
from the politics-before-reason?!? dept
I'm sure it's positively shocking (shocking!) to find out that a company has convinced politicians to sneak in a bit of language to a bill that favors them over the good of everyone else. The latest is everyone's favorite tax-preparation software maker, Intuit, (who you may recall for their effort to remove features for customers who don't regularly upgrade), who has been lobbying hard to add some language to a funding bill that would prevent the IRS from offering its own e-filing software or service. The reasoning is pretty obvious. And, if pushed on it, the politicians who were lobbied on this point would trot out some prepared phrase about how the government shouldn't compete with private companies. This would be the same argument that was used a few months ago in an attempt to block the National Weather Service from providing its info to the public. Of course, as others have pointed out that makes about as much sense as saying cities shouldn't offer public transportation because it competes with taxi services. Meanwhile, politicians don't seem to have a problem funding public competition for private businesses in areas like venture capital. Apparently, the VC community hasn't contributed enough to various politicians' re-election campaigns.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Not to defend Intuit
(I'm still mad at Intuit's Turbo Tax copy protection fiasco from a few years ago.)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Easy
[ link to this | view in thread ]
I can't find it
[ link to this | view in thread ]