How to get your piece of the $141 million TurboTax settlement

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Intuit, the parent company behind tax filing service TurboTax, has agreed to a settlement of $141 million as a result of its misleading practices. The settlement will pay out $30 for each year that TurboTax deceived users into paying for tax filing.

TurboTax found itself the target of a multi-state agreement led by New York Attorney General Letitia James. The agreement results from the fact that TurboTax misled its customers into believing that they would be filing their taxes for free.

The TurboTax Free option is the standard filing option for most users. The service does start as free. But millions of customers ended up having to pay for filings that were “too complex.”

Fortunately, the company has agreed to a settlement, and it’s paying millions of users. Those who qualify for the IRS Free File program and paid for TurboTax from 2016 to 2018 will be qualified to receive a payout.

How can you claim your payout from TurboTax?

For years, @Intuit cheated millions of Americans by tricking them into paying for @turbotax's tax filing services that should have been free.

Today, we're forcing Intuit to pay $141 million to Americans in all 50 states and Washington D.C. for its illegal actions.

— NY AG James (@NewYorkStateAG) May 4, 2022

For those users that qualify, there is no action necessary to receive your payment from TurboTax. If you fall into the correct category, you will get a notification by mail or email letting you know that you qualify for payment.

And you don’t have to file any kind of settlement. Those who qualify will automatically receive a $30 check for each year that they were deceived. You don’t have to fill out any kind of form, just wait for your check in the mail.

As for the timeline, it is still a little unclear. A spokesperson for the New York State Attorney’s Office told CNET that a third-party administrator is handling payouts. The exact timeline has not been revealed. But the spokesperson said she expects payments to start going out in the next couple of months.

So that should be a happy little surprise for past TurboTax users. And hopefully, this will result in TurboTax being much more transparent about its practices before users go through the grueling tax filing process.

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