SAN DIEGO, CA - Politics often make strange bedfellow, even strange spokespeople, and tax law reform is no exception; Intuit (INTU), parent of TurboTax has teamed with actor Wesley Snipes in lobbying U.S. Congress. Although the tax preparation behemoth aims to limit the government from establishing its own free filing service, the Blade Trinity star’s goal is bar all tax filing and collection entirely.
“This certainly is a marriage of convenience,” says Webster Smith, a tax attorney at Flanigan, Regis & Hayes, “but it does seem like both TurboTax and Mr. Snipes have a common immediate goal: to hinder Congress from levying taxes. However, one seems intent on usurping the government’s constitutional duty by interloping between citizens’ and their money, and the other is focused on shutting the whole thing down completely. It really does feel like two sides of the same coin.”
Although Mr. Snipes is not without controversy in the matter, having served a three-year sentence for failing to properly file Federal tax returns, the software-company-cum-money-changer has recently come into hot water for deliberately suppressing free filing services, currently mandated by law, in order to siphon tax payer fees into their own coffers and to perniciously upsell superfluous products.
When asked to comment on the incongruous partnership, Mr. Snipes replied “Hey, it’s just like the plot of US. Marshals; y’all think I’m the bad guy, but it’s the boring white guy working in the shadows that’s the real threat. Like RDJ, TurboTax is the real villain.”