Announced in early January, 2025, H&R Block has settled a complaint from the Federal Trade Commission for the amount of $7M. This order mandates changes to H&R Block’s advertising and customer service practices for the upcoming 2025 and 2026 tax filing seasons.
The settlement addresses long-standing issues in the online tax preparation industry, particularly the practice of upselling and the difficulties that consumers face when trying to access “free” tax filing options. This settlement is the finality of an FTC complaint filed in February of 2024.
Here are the key points of the settlement:
a) By February 15, 2025, H&R Block must implement a system allowing consumers to downgrade products through automated means, like chatbots, rather than requiring them to contact customer service directly.
b) H&R Block must, by 2026, stop deleting consumers’ previously entered information when they downgrade products.
c) H&R Block is now obligated to disclose in its “free” product advertisements either the percentage of taxpayers eligible for these products or state that most taxpayers do not qualify for them.
Intuit, the owner of Quickbooks is also the parent company of Turbo Tax and H&R Block.
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