TurboTax & Banks profit from tax refund fraud

How tax refund fraud is split between fraudsters and large corporations.

Intuit filed 10.2 Million returns with "Refund Transfers" in tax year 2014. Aside from the $25-$50 Intuit makes per state tax return, they also make a split from the "Refund Transfer", usually 80% of the $35 Refund Transfer fee charged by Santa Barbara Tax Products Group (TPG).

On Sept 18, 2014 - Santa Barbara Tax Products Group announced that they were being acquired by Green Dot. The press release states that "As a point of reference, more than 50% of all tax refunds loaded to Green Dot’s prepaid cards in the most recent tax season were processed by TPG." Source: http://ir.greendot.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=235286&p=irol-newsArticle&id=1969218

Tax Refund fraud is so profitable that Green Dot acquired TPG for 320M in cash and approximately 80M in stock.

TPG receives a copy of every single tax return filed (MeF file) through their system and supposedly has fraud measures in place. However, stopping fraud is not profitable to TPG. Approximately 8M of the 10.2M refunds processed via TPG came from TurboTax. TPG is the exclusive Refund Transfer provider of Intuit TurboTax.

TPG receives the refunds and loads most of the funds on prepaid cards or sends the money via direct deposit. TPG uses Receiving Deposit Financial Institutions (RDFIs) to run their business. These RDFIs which are FDIC insured financial institutions also turn a blind eye because of profit. Here are the institutions:

- Sunrise Banks (formerly University National Bank) https://www.sunrisebanks.com
- Civista Bank (formerly Citizens Bank) https://www.civistabank.com/
- MetaBank https://www.metabank.com/ - which powers TPGs Diamond Plus Card https://www.diamondpluscard.com

The right thing to do will be for all these organizations who have profited from tax refund fraud to return the money to the American taxpayers they have defrauded. The reality is that no one will care. No one will expose them and corporations with more money than G_d always prevail.