It's important, though, to understand exactly what that "regulatory capture" entails. See https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-st

It's important, though, to understand exactly what that "regulatory capture" entails. See 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... : > Internal presentations lay out company tactics for fighting “encroachment,” Intuit’s catchall term for any government initiative to make filing taxes easier — such as creating a free government filing system or pre-filling people’s returns with payroll or other data the IRS already has. “For a decade proposals have sought to create IRS tax software or a ReturnFree Tax System; All were stopped,” reads a confidential 2007 PowerPoint presentation from an Intuit board of directors meeting. The company’s 2014-15 plan included manufacturing “3rd-party grass roots” support. “Buy ads for op-eds/editorials/stories in African American and Latino media,” one internal PowerPoint slide states [ https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6483061-Intuit-TurboTax-2014-15-Encroachment-Strategy.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6483061-Intuit-Turbo... ]... Based on publicly available data and statements by Intuit executives, ProPublica estimates that roughly 15 million paying TurboTax customers could have filed for free if they found Free File. That represents more than $1.5 billion in estimated revenue, or more than half the total that TurboTax generates. Those affected include retirees, students, people on disability and minimum-wage workers. Note as well that Intuit recently acquired Credit Karma for $8.1 billion - a company whose business model relies on granularly predicting what financial products will be most profitable when offered to consumers. At the end of the day, it's often impossible to avoid using Intuit's B2B solutions like QuickBooks - as others have noted, they're an industry standard. But in the packed market of email service providers, is this the company who will set the most robust ethical boundaries on how to use a treasure trove of highly-actionable PII and purchasing data? Do we want to contribute to feeding our customers' data to such a company? That's a choice that those of us choosing ESP solutions should make with eyes wide open.