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Already said in this thread, but I think it's ridiculous that when people think about abusive big tech, they never think about Intuit. Their business is litera

Already said in this thread, but I think it's ridiculous that when people think about abusive big tech, they never think about Intuit. Their business is literally the idea of creating friction in federal and local tax systems so they can extort people in exchange of removing some of those synthetic frictions (emphasis on "some"). A sinister business model in every possible way.

Nicksil 5y ago
>I think it's ridiculous that when people think about abusive big tech, they never think about Intuit. I don't know why you think people don't think that. I imagine that most people who have been informed will think along similar lines. Those who don't think it are likely not yet informed.
- whoisjuan 5y ago
  If you talk to people outside of tech circles and you bring up Turbotax into the conversation, you will notice that people have a relatively positive view of it. Most people think of TurboTax as something that’s helping them to comply with their tax duties and navigate a complex tax system. They think of it as a helping hand when it comes to dealing with government bs. Not surprisingly, most people think the complete opposite about the government. So where Intuit is diabolically good, it’s at arbitraging those colloquial narratives and embedding itself in the middle as the savior. The good guy who is here to help. They screw you, so they can later come and help you. As I said before, a sinister business model.
birdyrooster 5y ago
People need to stop calling companies “big tech” because every large cap company uses technology in a way that used to be exclusive to one tech industry.
- boringg 5y ago
  "Big tech" is such a catchall that it almost completely devoid of value.
- Retric 5y ago
  Nintendo wasn’t a tech company for a long time but it made the switch. The same is true of Intuit, if most of your money comes from directly selling software/computer hardware ... your a tech company. That’s still not true of most large companies like say Walmart or McDonalds which still invest a great deal in technology.
  - LeifCarrotson 5y ago
    Obviously Microsoft or Apple is a tech company, they sell software and hardware. It's hard to say whether Intuit sells accounting services or whether they sell software. Is Google a tech company? Probably, but technically they sell advertisements, not software. You could say that they make money by operating ad-selling software. Walmart is a company that makes money by operating purchasing, distribution, and retailing software. An old west General Store owner could, if his records were lost, make a good guess as to what he should by from which big city distributors, when and how much of it to stock, and how much to sell it for, conversely, zero people have a comprehensive understanding of Walmart's product lines, they're just cogs in the software-powered machine that makes the corporation work. Every large company today is dependent on software. I agree that it's a bit absurd to suggest that this means they're all tech companies.
    - andrewaylett 5y ago
      I'd suggest that being "tech company" is in large part cultural mindset. Are they primarily dependant on off-the-shelf software? Possibly not a tech company. Is their software development team bigger than the whole of the rest of the company put together? Probably a tech company. Have the developers convinced everyone else to form squads and hold all the usual agile ceremonies? Don't @ me.
  - jwoah12 5y ago
    > it made the switch Nice.
- boringg 5y ago
  I think OP meant - people forget about the large company Intuit being a business built on an abusive business model enabled by technology. "Big tech" is a pejorative term in this case to trigger a reaction.
IMTDb 5y ago
Intuit is not "big tech". It's not even "tech". If computers and internet were not a thing, Intuit would work mostly the same way - their business is scraping money between citizen and the sate, and lobbying politician into keeping a broken system. That's not tech in any way. Other "big tech" companies would not even exist.
- tantalor 5y ago
  > It's not even "tech" Intuit most certainly is a tech company. They make web and desktop software. This semantic argument is a distraction. https://jobs.intuit.com/search-jobs/ https://jobs.intuit.com/search-jobs/ > If computers and internet were not a thing Cool counterfactual. Not relevant in this discussion.
  - slumdev 5y ago
    Doesn't a company have to be at least slightly sexy to be called "tech"?
    - mumblemumble 5y ago
      I was firmly on the side of "Intuit is a tech company", and then I read this comment, and then I had a hearty chuckle, and now I think I may be on the side of "Inuit is not a tech company."
conanbatt 5y ago
The monopoly is the government though, not Intuit...There is no way you can argue that Intuit has monopoly power over government!
- whoisjuan 5y ago
  Have your heard about a little thing called lobbying. https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f...
  - macspoofing 5y ago
    Lobbying is a fact of life in a democracy. For any government regulation, law, program, etc. there are multitudes of lobby groups on all sides of each issue. Why in this case is this such a big unethical crime? Lots of government programs are inefficient and expensive due to interest groups - that will never ever change. Welcome to Democracy.
    - xboxnolifes 5y ago
      Lobbying is bad when it creates outcomes I don't like.
      - Falling3 5y ago
        Lobbying is bad when it helps a single company at the expense of tens of millions of citizens. The situation is far more objective than you're pretending.
    - oneplane 5y ago
      No it's not a fact of life, it's a known quantity but not a fact and not life-related. And you can definitely ban it as well. It's not a requirement, and it's not the best, only or 'current' way. It's just a weak side-effect of the status quo (yes, technically that means 'weak' and 'current' but that is besides the point).
user3939382 5y ago
Don’t forget the CPA trade associations who are right there with them lobbying for the same nonsense tax complexity.
- tzs 5y ago
  The tax code is complex because people do not want to pay tax, and so anything that is ambiguous or underspecified becomes a loophole, the closing of which generally adds complexity to the code.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - avz 5y ago
    There exist countries with simple tax code, inhabited by people who do not want to pay tax. Therefore any valid explanation why US has a comparatively complex tax code must cite something specific about the US. A generic reference to human nature explains nothing.
    - tzs 5y ago
      What countries do you have in mind?
  - djbebs 5y ago
    No, the tax code is complex because the state wants to pick winners and losers.
macspoofing 5y ago
>Already said in this thread, but I think it's ridiculous that when people think about abusive big tech, they never think about Intuit. Because it isn't that big of a deal. > Their business is literally the idea of creating friction in federal and local tax systems so they can extort people in exchange of removing some of those synthetic frictions (emphasis on "some"). That's a hyperbolic characterization. It's not that big of deal. Lobbying is a fact of life in a democracy. There are always interest groups on every side of any issue that lobby for their selfish benefit, frequently to the detriment of the public (e.g. public sector union contracts). That tends to make most government programs less efficient and more expensive then they could be because politicians will balance needs of all kinds of interest groups. That will never change. Intuit has a right to lobby for their interests. Characterizing this as somehow nefarious, or even as an outlier is hyperbolic. Welcome to Democracy.
- trhway 5y ago
  Marlon Brando look alikes have the right to lobby too. It doesn't make them any less evil.
  - macspoofing 5y ago
    We are talking about inexpensive tax software as an alternative to free filing methods. It's not a big deal. Of course it could be more efficient and cheaper ... but so can many government programs. Are public sector unions evil when they negotiate outrageous contracts that the public has to pick up the tab for? This is what democracy looks like.
    - Miraste 5y ago
      This very article explains how they're deliberately blocking millions of desperately impoverished people from receiving billions of dollars. How is that not a big deal?
      - macspoofing 5y ago
        >they're deliberately blocking millions of desperately impoverished people from receiving billions of dollars. They aren't. Those programs don't require Intuit to claim.
novok 5y ago
Intiuit is medium-large tech, like a twitter, ebay, paypal, square, uber, etc. Also they pay crap and the work is uninteresting which is why nobody focuses on them.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
  > Also they pay crap Do they even employ any sizable number of IC SWEs in the US, or are they all Leads/M2s that manage outsourced contracts?
  - novok 5y ago
    I have no idea, but I've met someone who worked on mint @ intuit in person in the bay years ago.
- bogomipz 5y ago
  They're actually fairly active in the Kubernetes world. I've watched some conference talks where they've presented on their ArgoCD platform. I could not imagine working for Intuit though. I don't know how they do it.

Nicksil 5y ago

>I think it's ridiculous that when people think about abusive big tech, they never think about Intuit. I don't know why you think people don't think that. I imagine that most people who have been informed will think along similar lines. Those who don't think it are likely not yet informed.

whoisjuan 5y ago
If you talk to people outside of tech circles and you bring up Turbotax into the conversation, you will notice that people have a relatively positive view of it. Most people think of TurboTax as something that’s helping them to comply with their tax duties and navigate a complex tax system. They think of it as a helping hand when it comes to dealing with government bs. Not surprisingly, most people think the complete opposite about the government. So where Intuit is diabolically good, it’s at arbitraging those colloquial narratives and embedding itself in the middle as the savior. The good guy who is here to help. They screw you, so they can later come and help you. As I said before, a sinister business model.

birdyrooster 5y ago

People need to stop calling companies “big tech” because every large cap company uses technology in a way that used to be exclusive to one tech industry.

boringg 5y ago
"Big tech" is such a catchall that it almost completely devoid of value.
Retric 5y ago
Nintendo wasn’t a tech company for a long time but it made the switch. The same is true of Intuit, if most of your money comes from directly selling software/computer hardware ... your a tech company. That’s still not true of most large companies like say Walmart or McDonalds which still invest a great deal in technology.
- LeifCarrotson 5y ago
  Obviously Microsoft or Apple is a tech company, they sell software and hardware. It's hard to say whether Intuit sells accounting services or whether they sell software. Is Google a tech company? Probably, but technically they sell advertisements, not software. You could say that they make money by operating ad-selling software. Walmart is a company that makes money by operating purchasing, distribution, and retailing software. An old west General Store owner could, if his records were lost, make a good guess as to what he should by from which big city distributors, when and how much of it to stock, and how much to sell it for, conversely, zero people have a comprehensive understanding of Walmart's product lines, they're just cogs in the software-powered machine that makes the corporation work. Every large company today is dependent on software. I agree that it's a bit absurd to suggest that this means they're all tech companies.
  - andrewaylett 5y ago
    I'd suggest that being "tech company" is in large part cultural mindset. Are they primarily dependant on off-the-shelf software? Possibly not a tech company. Is their software development team bigger than the whole of the rest of the company put together? Probably a tech company. Have the developers convinced everyone else to form squads and hold all the usual agile ceremonies? Don't @ me.
- jwoah12 5y ago
  > it made the switch Nice.
boringg 5y ago
I think OP meant - people forget about the large company Intuit being a business built on an abusive business model enabled by technology. "Big tech" is a pejorative term in this case to trigger a reaction.

IMTDb 5y ago

Intuit is not "big tech". It's not even "tech". If computers and internet were not a thing, Intuit would work mostly the same way - their business is scraping money between citizen and the sate, and lobbying politician into keeping a broken system. That's not tech in any way. Other "big tech" companies would not even exist.

tantalor 5y ago
> It's not even "tech" Intuit most certainly is a tech company. They make web and desktop software. This semantic argument is a distraction. https://jobs.intuit.com/search-jobs/ https://jobs.intuit.com/search-jobs/ > If computers and internet were not a thing Cool counterfactual. Not relevant in this discussion.
- slumdev 5y ago
  Doesn't a company have to be at least slightly sexy to be called "tech"?
  - mumblemumble 5y ago
    I was firmly on the side of "Intuit is a tech company", and then I read this comment, and then I had a hearty chuckle, and now I think I may be on the side of "Inuit is not a tech company."

conanbatt 5y ago

The monopoly is the government though, not Intuit...There is no way you can argue that Intuit has monopoly power over government!

whoisjuan 5y ago
Have your heard about a little thing called lobbying. https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f...
- macspoofing 5y ago
  Lobbying is a fact of life in a democracy. For any government regulation, law, program, etc. there are multitudes of lobby groups on all sides of each issue. Why in this case is this such a big unethical crime? Lots of government programs are inefficient and expensive due to interest groups - that will never ever change. Welcome to Democracy.
  - xboxnolifes 5y ago
    Lobbying is bad when it creates outcomes I don't like.
    - Falling3 5y ago
      Lobbying is bad when it helps a single company at the expense of tens of millions of citizens. The situation is far more objective than you're pretending.
  - oneplane 5y ago
    No it's not a fact of life, it's a known quantity but not a fact and not life-related. And you can definitely ban it as well. It's not a requirement, and it's not the best, only or 'current' way. It's just a weak side-effect of the status quo (yes, technically that means 'weak' and 'current' but that is besides the point).

user3939382 5y ago

Don’t forget the CPA trade associations who are right there with them lobbying for the same nonsense tax complexity.

tzs 5y ago
The tax code is complex because people do not want to pay tax, and so anything that is ambiguous or underspecified becomes a loophole, the closing of which generally adds complexity to the code.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- avz 5y ago
  There exist countries with simple tax code, inhabited by people who do not want to pay tax. Therefore any valid explanation why US has a comparatively complex tax code must cite something specific about the US. A generic reference to human nature explains nothing.
  - tzs 5y ago
    What countries do you have in mind?
- djbebs 5y ago
  No, the tax code is complex because the state wants to pick winners and losers.

macspoofing 5y ago

>Already said in this thread, but I think it's ridiculous that when people think about abusive big tech, they never think about Intuit. Because it isn't that big of a deal. > Their business is literally the idea of creating friction in federal and local tax systems so they can extort people in exchange of removing some of those synthetic frictions (emphasis on "some"). That's a hyperbolic characterization. It's not that big of deal. Lobbying is a fact of life in a democracy. There are always interest groups on every side of any issue that lobby for their selfish benefit, frequently to the detriment of the public (e.g. public sector union contracts). That tends to make most government programs less efficient and more expensive then they could be because politicians will balance needs of all kinds of interest groups. That will never change. Intuit has a right to lobby for their interests. Characterizing this as somehow nefarious, or even as an outlier is hyperbolic. Welcome to Democracy.

trhway 5y ago
Marlon Brando look alikes have the right to lobby too. It doesn't make them any less evil.
- macspoofing 5y ago
  We are talking about inexpensive tax software as an alternative to free filing methods. It's not a big deal. Of course it could be more efficient and cheaper ... but so can many government programs. Are public sector unions evil when they negotiate outrageous contracts that the public has to pick up the tab for? This is what democracy looks like.
  - Miraste 5y ago
    This very article explains how they're deliberately blocking millions of desperately impoverished people from receiving billions of dollars. How is that not a big deal?
    - macspoofing 5y ago
      >they're deliberately blocking millions of desperately impoverished people from receiving billions of dollars. They aren't. Those programs don't require Intuit to claim.

novok 5y ago

Intiuit is medium-large tech, like a twitter, ebay, paypal, square, uber, etc. Also they pay crap and the work is uninteresting which is why nobody focuses on them.

DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
> Also they pay crap Do they even employ any sizable number of IC SWEs in the US, or are they all Leads/M2s that manage outsourced contracts?
- novok 5y ago
  I have no idea, but I've met someone who worked on mint @ intuit in person in the bay years ago.
bogomipz 5y ago
They're actually fairly active in the Kubernetes world. I've watched some conference talks where they've presented on their ArgoCD platform. I could not imagine working for Intuit though. I don't know how they do it.