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H&R Block

H&R Block, Inc.
Public
Traded as
Founded 1955; 62 years ago (1955)
Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.
Founder
  • Henry Bloch
  • Richard Bloch
Headquarters Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.
Area served
United States, Canada, Australia, India, Brazil
Key people
Products
Revenue Increase$ 3.1 billion (FY 2015)
Increase$ 474 million (FY 2015)
Total assets Increase$ 4.5 billion (FY 2015)
Total equity Increase$ 1.8 billion (FY 2015)
Number of employees
2,200 (April 2015)
Website hrblock.com

H&R Block is an American tax preparation company in North America, Australia, Brazil and India. The Kansas City-based company also offers banking, payroll, personal finance, and business consulting services.

Founded in 1955 by brothers Henry W. Bloch and Richard Bloch, Block today operates approximately 12,000 retail tax offices worldwide. Block offers its own consumer tax software (formerly TaxCut), as well as online tax preparation and electronic filing from their website.

During World War II, Henry W. Bloch was a young Army Air Forces navigator who wanted to start a family business with his brothers in Kansas City.

Home from the war in 1946, Henry saw a pamphlet suggesting a bright future for companies serving small businesses, and it fired his imagination. That year, Henry and his older brother, Leon, borrowed $5,000 and opened a small bookkeeping business on Main Street in downtown Kansas City. However, four months later, they had few clients and Leon decided to seek a law degree.

Henry wanted to keep trying with the fledgling business and placed a newspaper ad for help-wanted. He got an unexpected response—from his mother—who proposed that Henry hire his younger brother, Richard, for the job. Henry and Richard Bloch jointly ran their United Business Company, which focused on bookkeeping, but also did some income tax work for clients. The brothers found that doing taxes was time consuming and they decided to end that type of service. One of their clients, John White, an ad salesman for The Kansas City Star newspaper, had a different idea; he suggested the Blochs make tax preparation a separate business and developed an ad announcing $5 tax services. The Blochs were not convinced, but they agreed to run the ad in January 1955. The next day, the brothers had an office full of tax clients, and H&R Block was born.

In 1956, the Blochs decided to expand and picked New York City. The move was profitable, but neither brother wanted to move to New York, so they agreed to sell that regional operation to two local accountants. However, since the would-be buyers could not meet the asking price, the parties agreed the Bloch brothers would get $10,000, plus royalties from the tax operation, creating the first H&R Block franchise tax office. The Bloch brothers chose to spell the name "Block" with a K to ensure the name is not mispronounced "blotch." In the following years, H&R Block grew quickly and went public in 1962, then opened its first tax training school in 1965 to meet the demand for skilled tax professionals at its franchise offices.


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