And in another News from Yesterday......................

Virginia Republican linked to tax-filing companies that scammed poor Virginians
By
Dan Desai Martin -
October 18, 2019

Del. Tim Hugo is linked to Intuit and H&R Block, two companies that allegedly steered low-income Virginians away from free tax-filing options to increase their profits.

Virginia Republican Del. Tim Hugo is linked to two companies that steered low-income Americans — including Virginians — away from free tax-filing programs even though they were eligible to use them. Instead, the companies used "deceptive design and misleading advertising to trick lower-income Americans into paying to file their taxes," according to an April ProPublica investigation.

Hugo is the executive director of the Free File Alliance, a nonprofit organization representing 12 tax software companies. The Free File Alliance entered into an agreement with the IRS to provide free tax-filing services to millions of low-income Americans. In return, the IRS would not provide free tax software for Americans.

But two of the Free File Alliance's biggest members, Intuit, which owns Turbo Tax, and H&R Block, intentionally made it harder for Americans to find and use the free versions, even if they qualified for it. Through using computer code on their website, "TurboTax Free File is effectively hidden from Google," ProPublica reported. Further, "Intuit's smaller competitor in the market, H&R Block, also hid its H&R Block Free File product from Google using the same sort of code."

https://shareblue.com/virginia-republican-tim-hugo-tax-filing-companies-scam-intuit-h-r-block-gop/