JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is suing three popular tax preparation companies.

The lawsuit claims Kansas City-based H&R Block, along with Taxslayer LLC and TaxAct, Inc. illegally shared information belonging to millions of Missouri taxpayers with Meta, Google, and other tech companies.

The lawsuit comes a day after a group of congressional Democrats reported the same tax preparation companies sent the tech companies personal information on tens of millions of taxpayers over the past two years.

The three companies are accused of using specific computer code to send personal, financial, and tax return information to tech companies even after explicitly promising the information wouldn’t be shared.

This is what the lawsuit claims the tax preparation companies may have shared about you, if you were a customer:

names;

health savings account contributions;

college tuition grants, scholarships, and educational expenses;

whether the consumer visited pages related to dependents;

whether the consumer visited pages related to certain types of income (such as rental income or capital gains);

whether the consumer visited pages related to certain tax credits or deductions

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey says the Meta, Google, and others use the information to target people with online ads.

“If there’s anything we’ve discovered in our federal censorship lawsuit, it’s that these Big Tech companies do not have Americans’ best interests at heart. The last thing we need is for Big Tech giants to have access to personal information because these tax companies decided to evade the law,” Bailey said.

The lawsuit claims the companies acted deceptively and unfairly while misrepresenting services and products.

Bailey is asking for a preliminary injunction to immediately stop what he calls illegal behavior. He is also asking for full restitution to all affected customers and a civil penalty.