Americans filing taxes may face privacy threats, the Washington Post reports.
When preparing your tax return, TurboTax says, “We need your OK on a few things.”
This innocuous sound should set off alarm bells in your head.
America's most popular tax preparation website asks you to sign an ironclad privacy protection for your tax return, including your income, mortgage and student loan payment details here. With your permission to reveal your financial secrets, the company can earn additional income for the next three years by showing you advertisements for things like credit cards and mortgage offers tailored to your financial situation.
If TurboTax asks for permission to “share your data” or use your tax information to “improve your experience,” you have a legal right to say no.
The article claims that by granting permission, TurboTax can share details such as “your paycheck, tax refund amount, whether you received student loan tax relief, the date you printed your tax return, etc.” with “sibling” companies.
“This permission request will appear once near the beginning of the tax preparation process. If you skip it at that point, the same screen will appear again near the end. You must say yes or no…”
This is part of a corporate arms race over personal data. Everyone including the grocery store, your app, and the manufacturer of your car are gobbling up information to profit from the details of your life. However, TurboTax gives you the power to decline participation…
TurboTax and H&R Block's online tax preparation services have asked us to blow up our tax returns year after year. We've warned about this each of the past two tax filing seasons. (This year we focused only on TurboTax.)