Intuit: Quicken's $15 Rebate, a Blocked Microsoft Deal and Free File

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Intuit was founded in 1983 by Scott Cook, a former Procter & Gamble product analyst, and Tom Proulx, a Stanford programmer who coded the first Quicken in Microsoft BASIC for the IBM PC and UCSD Pascal for the Apple II. When Microsoft launched Microsoft Money in 1991, Cook used a packaged-goods tactic: a $15 rebate that brought shoppers into stores like Egghead and CompUSA and won Quicken front-of-store placement. Intuit went public on NASDAQ in 1993 and bought ChipSoft, maker of TurboTax. In 1994 Microsoft tried to buy Intuit for $2 billion, but the Justice Department sued to block it and Microsoft dropped the deal. Intuit then built out QuickBooks and TurboTax, bought Lacerte for $400 million in 1998 to reach large accounting firms, and later acquired Credit Karma for $7.1 billion in 2020 and Mailchimp for $12 billion in 2021.

Intuit joined the Free File Alliance, in which tax software firms offered free filing to lower-income taxpayers in exchange for an IRS promise not to build its own free pre-filled system. In 2019 ProPublica reported that Intuit had placed a noindex tag on the government-mandated TurboTax Free File page while steering users to the paid-upgrade TurboTax Free Edition. In 2022 Intuit agreed to a $141 million settlement with state attorneys general, and it left the alliance after the 2021 season. An FTC administrative judge ordered Intuit to stop its free advertising claims, but in March 2026 the Fifth Circuit vacated the order, ruling the FTC's in-house judge system unconstitutional for those penalties and requiring a federal jury trial.

• From 2009 to 2014 Intuit spent nearly $13 million on lobbying, matching Apple, and fought California's ReadyReturn pre-filled system.
• Intuit settled the high-tech employee no-poach antitrust case alongside Apple and Google.
• Intuit laid off 1,800 workers in July 2024 and 3,000 more, 17 percent, in May 2026 to focus on generative AI.
• It announced a $100 million partnership with OpenAI in 2025 and a multi-year deal with Anthropic in early 2026.
• In 2026 it opened 600 offices and 20 TurboTax storefronts pairing AI with human tax experts.