H&R Block

H&R Block is a tax-preparation company founded in Kansas City in 1955 by brothers Henry W. Bloch and Richard A. Bloch. It grew from a single midtown office into the largest tax-preparation firm in the United States and one of the most recognized consumer financial-services brands of the 20th century. The company remains headquartered in downtown Kansas City, and the Bloch family ranks among the city’s foremost philanthropic dynasties.

Founding & the Bloch brothers

H&R Block, Inc. was founded in Kansas City in 1955 by brothers Henry W. Bloch (1922–2019) and Richard A. Bloch (1926–2004).¹ The brothers had run a small Kansas City firm, United Business Company, since 1946, offering bookkeeping, management, and collection services to local businesses and preparing their clients’ income-tax returns at no extra charge.²

In 1955 the brothers refocused the enterprise entirely on individual income-tax preparation, a consumer service for which they saw growing demand. The timing was deliberate: the Internal Revenue Service was phasing out its long-standing practice of preparing returns free of charge for taxpayers, beginning in Kansas City.² A modest advertisement in The Kansas City Star drew an immediate response, and within weeks the new venture had eclipsed much of the annual volume United Business Company had taken years to build.²

The brothers chose the spelling “Block” rather than their family surname, Bloch, so that customers would not mispronounce it as “blotch.” The “H” and “R” stood for Henry and Richard.¹ Henry Bloch became the company’s public face, appearing in its television advertising for decades as a soft-spoken, bespectacled authority on tax matters.

Growth

H&R Block expanded rapidly across the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico through a franchise model that paired local operators with corporate training, marketing, and standardized systems. The company went public in 1962.¹ By 1969 it operated more than 3,000 offices, with annual volume exceeding $56 million.²

By the mid-1970s H&R Block was the largest tax-preparation company in the United States, a position it has held through the decades since despite later competition from Intuit’s TurboTax, Jackson Hewitt, Liberty Tax, and a range of do-it-yourself tax software.¹ In recent years the company has reported roughly $3.6 billion in annual revenue, operated on the order of 10,000 to 12,000 retail offices in the U.S. and abroad, and employed tens of thousands of seasonal preparers during tax season.¹

For a period the company also diversified well beyond taxes. In 1980 H&R Block acquired a controlling stake in CompuServe, one of the largest early consumer online services in the United States, operating it through the 1990s before selling it in 1998.¹

Downtown headquarters

H&R Block has long been a fixture of downtown Kansas City. The company’s current world headquarters, the H&R Block Center at One H&R Block Way (Main Street at 13th Street), opened in 2006; associates began relocating in July 2006, with the move completed by that October.³ Ground had been broken in September 2004.¹

Designed by the Kansas City firm 360 Architecture and built by JE Dunn Construction, the roughly 525,000-square-foot complex pairs a green-glass elliptical tower with a low-rise structure and helped reshape the downtown skyline. The building anchors the northern edge of the Power & Light District redevelopment that transformed the south end of downtown in the same era.³

Earlier in its history the company occupied the 1976 tower later known as One Kansas City Place — for many years the tallest building in Missouri — before consolidating into the purpose-built H&R Block Center.

Henry Bloch’s philanthropy

Henry Bloch became one of Kansas City’s most consequential philanthropists. UMKC’s business school was endowed by Bloch in 1986 and renamed the Henry W. Bloch School of Management at the University of Missouri–Kansas City; the family foundation has continued to fund the school with multimillion-dollar gifts.⁴

Henry Bloch and his wife, Marion, also underwrote the Bloch Building, the celebrated 2007 expansion of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art designed by Steven Holl Architects. In 2010 the Blochs pledged their private collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings — works by Monet, van Gogh, Cézanne, Renoir, and Degas — to the museum.⁵ His broader giving extended to Saint Luke’s Hospital, the H&R Block Foundation, and the Marion and Henry Bloch Family Foundation, among many Kansas City institutions.⁴

Henry Bloch died in Kansas City on April 23, 2019, at age 96.⁶ His brother Richard, who survived a 1978 terminal-cancer diagnosis and lived another 26 years, devoted his later life to cancer advocacy through the R.A. Bloch Cancer Foundation and the network of Bloch Cancer Survivors Parks he funded in Kansas City and dozens of other U.S. cities; he died in 2004.¹

Legacy

H&R Block effectively created the consumer tax-preparation industry as a mass-market category, making professionally prepared returns affordable and accessible to ordinary taxpayers at a moment when the federal government was withdrawing its own free service. The standardized, trained-preparer model the brothers built became the template for the entire industry that followed.

The company stands alongside Hallmark Cards as one of Kansas City’s signature corporate institutions, and the Bloch family’s civic giving — to UMKC, the Nelson-Atkins, and cancer care among many causes — places it among the handful of families whose philanthropy has shaped the modern city.

Sites in KC associated with H&R Block

• H&R Block Center — One H&R Block Way (Main Street at 13th); world headquarters, opened 2006
• Original H&R Block office — 3917 Main Street, midtown Kansas City
• Henry W. Bloch School of Management — UMKC
• Bloch Building at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art — Steven Holl Architects; opened 2007
• Bloch Cancer Survivors Park — near the Country Club Plaza

Sources

Footnotes

1. H&R Block, Inc. — Wikipedia, “H&R Block.” Founding (1955), Bloch brothers, “Block” spelling, 1962 IPO, largest U.S. tax-prep firm, scale figures, CompuServe, 2004 groundbreaking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%26R_Block ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

2. “History of H&R Block, Incorporated” — FundingUniverse; and Encyclopedia.com, “H&R Block, Inc.” United Business Company (1946), the IRS withdrawal of free return preparation, early-1955 advertising response, 1969 office count and volume. https://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/h-r-block-incorporated-history/ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

3. “H&R Block celebrates opening of new headquarters” (H&R Block investor release) and KCtoday, “How H&R Block shaped downtown Kansas City.” 2006 opening, July–October 2006 move, complex size, 360 Architecture, JE Dunn. https://investors.hrblock.com/news-releases/news-release-details/hr-block-celebrates-opening-new-headquarters ↩ ↩²

4. Henry W. Bloch School of Management, UMKC — institutional materials; Philanthropy News Digest, “Bloch Family Foundation Awards $21 Million to UMKC.” 1986 endowment, school renaming, later gifts, family-foundation philanthropy. https://bloch.umkc.edu/about-us/index.html ↩ ↩²

5. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art — “Nelson-Atkins Mourns Loss of Henry Bloch.” Bloch Building (opened June 2007), 2010 art collection pledge. https://www.nelson-atkins.org/nelson-atkins-mourns-loss-henry-bloch/ ↩

6. “H&R Block announces passing of co-founder, Henry W. Bloch” (H&R Block investor release); Henry W. Bloch — Wikipedia. Death April 23, 2019, age 96. https://investors.hrblock.com/news-releases/news-release-details/hr-block-announces-passing-co-founder-henry-w-bloch ↩