TurboTax and H&R Block kept free filing page from Google

TurboTax Deliberately Hid Its Free File Page From Search Engines
The makers of TurboTax as well as H&R Block promised the IRS to offer free filing for many Americans. But they have kept Google from seeing it.

I ran into this article some days ago.
https://www.propublica.org/article/turb ... ch-engines

It shows the worrisome power big companies have over what people can find on the internet and how far they'll go to try to line their own pockets.

You may have noticed that the ads that appear in your own searches coincide with whatever you have searched for previously. Who is manipulating what you can find on the internet? Unfortunately, this is not a conspiracy theory but something that's actually being done by companies like Intuit and H&R Block and, of course, many more. This did not make the big headlines, at least not in my searches, lol.

And yet, it was in part due to reporting by ProPublica (the link you posted) that resulted in the Free File Alliance failing to make it into the recent "Taxpayer First" act passed by Congress.

So, they don't like the voluntary Free File Alliance, they don't want it made permanent, and in fact that want it replaced by IRS-developed software (yeah, what could go wrong with that? ) Yet, they criticize two vendors for not sufficiently promoting their voluntary participation in the Free File Alliance. Talk about a mixed message...

Oh, and if they really wanted to put the taxpayer "first", why did Congress yet again fail to authorize regulation of tax preparers?

"The sticking point in the first version passed by House, the codification of the Free File Alliance available from tax prep software companies, was removed after a series of reports by ProPublica. The investigative news site claimed this would prevent the IRS from developing software of its own. Congress bowed to the pressure."

https://www.cpapracticeadvisor.com/tax- ... at-the-irs

I hope at some point that the IRS releases statistics on the use of the online Withholding Calculator. If taxpayers with relatively simple situations won't even use this calculator, what is the likelihood they will trust the government to correctly calculate and then file their overall tax liability?

And if the IRS were to develop its own 1040 filing software, would it be as aggressive as Turbotax/H&R in helping taxpayers find deductions? Would they be able to flag certain situations as "not common" and thereby hint to the taxpayer that it's OK to skip that part of the interview? Would they be able to provide an estimate of the likelihood of being audited based on entries in the software, as the commercial products do?