Intuit makes tax returns easy - unless you're Tim Geithner

Barack Obama's nominee for Treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, has been getting a bit of a hard time at his confirmation hearing over some taxes he failed to pay a few years ago.

During questions from the Senate Finance Committee it emerged, to laughter from the chamber crowd, that the supposed finance whizz had used Intuit's off-the-shelf TurboTax software to complete his incorrect returns.

According to the WSJ, Geithner told the committee the error was his fault and not the "software's responsibility".

But Intuit felt compelled to put out a statement saying: "TurboTax, and all software and in-person tax preparation services, base their calculations on the information users provide when completing their returns."

Which I suspect translates as: it's not our fault the idiot charged with saving the world's economy didn't put in the right numbers.