Intuit Begs Journalists to Delete Part of Interview With Its CEO

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Fintech Karen

Intuit, the financial tech giant behind TurboTax and Quickbooks, inexplicably demanded that The Verge completely delete a portion of editor-in-chief Nilay Patel's interview with its CEO, Sasan Goodarzi, because of — we are not kidding — "raised voices."

According to Patel, Intuit was specifically mad about a section of the interview in which Patel asks Goodrazi about TurboTax's known history of pouring millions of dollars into intense lobbying efforts.

What has Intuit been lobbying against, you ask? As has been widely documented through extensive reporting, Intuit has been hoping to kneecap government efforts to let Americans easily file taxes online for free.

Basically, Goodrazi got touchy when asked about his organization's efforts to neutralize government-spearheaded free tax filing programs. He hit back that Patel's question — the editor said that Intuit is "legendary for lobbying against free direct federal e-filing" and then straightforwardly asked how much of their budget is allocated towards lobbying efforts — was "fundamentally" based in the "wrong premise" and was "inaccurate," before declaring that Intuit doesn't "lobby against free."

The exchange, which the Verge published in full without edits, went on for a few minutes. We wouldn't call it a friendly part of the conversation, but Goodrazi is the CEO of a company with a market cap nearing $172 billion. He's not new to interviews, nor should he be to this specific line of questioning — again, it's well documented that Intuit does, in fact, lobby against free!

But it seems that Intuit couldn't let soon-to-be-sleeping-dogs lie. After the interview, the Verge reportedly received a deeply bizarre email from chief Intuit communications officer Rick Heineman calling the exchange "inappropriate," "egregious," and "disappointing." To cap off the angry message, Heineman demanded that "at the very least the end portion of your interview should be deleted."

Think it's safe to say that this is a sore subject?

Weird Stuff

After the Verge told Heineman that it wouldn't delete the conversation, Heineman again demanded that the outlet "delete that which takes away from the conversation," which he clarified to be "raised voices" or either party "speaking over each other." So, in other words, any part of the conversation that didn't involve a journalist sitting placidly by as the CEO of a multibillion-dollar personal finance behemoth spits obfuscatory word salad over a serious public interest query.

All in all, it's extremely strange stuff to be coming from a corporate giant — and doesn't exactly instill confidence that Intuit has the consumer's best interest at heart.

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