WASHINGTON — A Federal Trade Commission judge on Friday issued an opening ruling against Intuit, the maker of the popular tax filing software TurboTax, saying the company deceived consumers with ads for misdesignated “free” tax products.

Intuit violated Section 5 of the FTC Act by promoting “free” tax products and services for which many were inappropriate, according to Chief Administrative Law Judge D. Michael Chappell. The full commission will review the judgment before take rounding a final decision.

Intuit will appeal the ruling, said Rick Heineman, a spokesperson for the company.

“It’s no surprise that a package the FTC brought before itself, argued with FTC-employed lawyers, all before an FTC-employed judge got a ruling in favor of the FTC,” Heineman said. “You can’t intimate this stuff up — it’s a flawed system and a groundless ruling.”

Sam Levine, administrator of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said the judge’s ruling is completely objective.

“In recent years, FTC staff has lost various cases than we’ve won before the Administrative Law Judge, who has complete independence from the rest of the agency,” Levine told CNBC. “What Intuit is in the end trying to do is distract from a meticulous and thorough opinion that decisively finds they’ve been deceiving the also clientage for years.”

Chappell also issued a cease-and-desist order out of “cognizant danger of a recurring violation” against Intuit, which confines the company from advertising goods and services as free unless it’s free to all customers, a majority of U.S. taxpayers or clearly countries the limits. The order must be shared with relevant parties for the next 20 years, according to the FTC.

Shares of Intuit tight-fisted down 0.55% Friday after earlier hitting a 52-week high.

In a 2022 administrative complaint, the FTC said millions of taxpayers, comprising those who receive a certain 1099 form from the IRS or earn farm income, did not qualify for TurboTax’s “free” armed forces. About two-thirds of filers could not use the free service in 2020, the complaint said.

Intuit entered into an ahead with all 50 states and the District of Columbia in 2022 to pay $141 million to users who paid for TurboTax when the enter software should have been free, a deal affecting about 4.4 million consumers.

Section 5 of the FTC Act impedes companies from engaging in misleading acts or practices that can cause substantial injury to consumers.