RON WYDEN COMMITTEES:

RANKING MEMBER OF COMMITTEE ON

FINANCE (Hui [Ed tat?g [natg SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE

OREGON COMMITTEE ON FINANCE
COMMUTEE ON BUDGET
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY 8: NATURAL RESOURCES

JOINT COMMITTEE ON TAXATION

WASHINGTON, DC 20510?3703

221 DIRKSEN SENATE OFFICE BUILDING
WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224?5244

April 6, 2020

The Honorable Makan Delrahim

Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Division
The US. Department of Justice

950 Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20530

Dear Assistant Attorney General Delrahim:

I write to ask that the Department of Justice (DOJ) take action to protect consumers by
investigating Intuit?s acquisition of Credit Karma.

On February 24, 2020, Intuit the company that makes TurboTaX, QuickBooks and Mint 
announced that it is purchasing Credit Karma, which offers a competing, free tax ?ling product
as well as free credit monitoring and other ?nancial services to 100 million consumers.

According to Internal Revenue Service data analyzed by ProPublica, TurboTaX controlled 67%
of the market for online tax preparation services in 2019. This generated 2.2 billion dollars of
revenue for Intuit.

Intuit does offer a free version of TurboTaX Online, however, it is only available to ?lers with
the most basic tax returns. Moreover, investigative journalists have repeatedly exposed how
Intuit exploited ?dark patterns? on its website and manipulated search engine results to trick low-
income tax ?lers eligible for its Free File service into unnecessarily paying for TurboTax.
Intuit?s highly-pro?table tax preparation business depends both on duping low-income tax-?lers
and in eliminating the threat posed by universal free??ling options from competitors like Credit
Karma.

Without Credit Karma?s free tax ?ling product, consumers will have far fewer choices and many
of them will have product that is available for free today.

In addition to the anti-competitive issues raised by this deal, Intuit?s purchase of Credit Karma
also raises serious questions about the impact on Americans? privacy. Credit Karma provides
free credit monitoring services to 100 million consumers an essential service these days,
given the frequency of mega data breaches. As a result, the company holds a huge amount of
sensitive consumer data, which Intuit will be able to monetize in ways that are counter to the
interests of the Americans from whom it was collected. The acquisition of such a large amount
of highly-sensitive ?nancial data about Americans deserves signi?cant scrutiny under any
circumstances.

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 has until April 7, 2020, to make a determination on whether or not, to investigate lntuit?s
purchase of Credit Karma. Given the serious competition and privacy concerns I have detailed
above, and signi?cant coronavirus-related staf?ng and resource constraints, I urge you to
extend the clock and give this deal the close scrutiny it deserves.

Thank you for your attention to this important matter.
Sincerely,

?aw/v

Ron Wyden
United States Senator