<story><title>TurboTax Uses Dark Patterns to Trick You into Paying to File Your Taxes</title><url>https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-just-tricked-you-into-paying-to-file-your-taxes</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>1024core</author><text>The &lt;i&gt;real&lt;/i&gt; dark pattern is their ability to bribe the Congress into preventing IRS from implementing free filing.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>turc1656</author><text>Nah, you&amp;#x27;re missing the forest when looking at the trees.  Go bigger.  Why the hell is the tax code so damn complicated that it requires certified experts and special software to perform &lt;i&gt;personal&lt;/i&gt; tax filings?  I can see the case for a complex code for business taxes since there are many different industries that have different rules.  But personal returns should never, ever have such complicated rules.  And that doesn&amp;#x27;t mean I agree with business taxes being complicated, merely that the argument is much more reasonable.</text></comment>
<story><title>TurboTax Uses Dark Patterns to Trick You into Paying to File Your Taxes</title><url>https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-just-tricked-you-into-paying-to-file-your-taxes</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>1024core</author><text>The &lt;i&gt;real&lt;/i&gt; dark pattern is their ability to bribe the Congress into preventing IRS from implementing free filing.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rootusrootus</author><text>While Intuit definitely feeds Congress some money in support of their corporate goals, the lack of free tax filing is probably more Grover Norquist&amp;#x27;s fault.  He strongly opposes anything that would make paying taxes easier, and he has a lot more influence than Intuit.</text></comment>