• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, December 18, 2023

Google is urging a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit over allegations that its analytics tools wrongly collected taxpayers' information from online tax-filing services.

In papers filed late last week with U.S. District Court Judge P. Casey Pitts in San Jose, Google argues that providing an analytics tool to outside developers does not in itself violate wiretap statutes or other privacy-related laws.

The company's papers come in response to a class-action complaint filed in July by Illinois resident Mary Smith, and later joined by other online tax filers.

Smith sued soon after Democratic lawmakers released a report stating that online tax preparation services including TaxAct, TaxSlayer and H&R Block shared “millions” of users' sensitive information with Meta, Google, and other tech companies.

That report focused on analytics tools including the Meta Pixel and Google Analytics.

Google said when the report came out that it has “strict policies and technical features that prohibit Google Analytics customers from collecting data that could be used to identify an individual,” and doesn't allow advertising to people based on sensitive information.

The company is now arguing that the allegations in the complaint, even if proven true, would show only that it offered analytics tools to developers -- not that it received sensitive data or harnessed tax-related data for advertising.

“Google acted only in its capacity as a vendor providing an analytics tool,” the company writes. “Web developers, not Google, choose whether to use Google Analytics, and what (if any) information to send to Google.”

Google adds that the Analytics terms of service prohibit websites from transmitting personally identifiable information back to Google, and also require developers to disclose their use of Analytics and obtain users' consent.

Smith and the other plaintiffs are expected to counter Google's argument next month.

Meta is facing a similar class-action complaint in federal court in San Jose.

In September, the Federal Trade Commission warned five tax-preparation companies against using tracking technologies -- including pixels, cookies, application programming interfaces and software development kits -- to collect, analyze or transfer confidential information, without consumers' consent.