H&R Block
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H&R Block Template:Nyse is a tax preparation and personal finance management company founded by brothers Henry W. and Richard Bloch in Kansas City in 1955 (they changed the name of the company to prevent mispronounciation). The Blochs founded the company in response to the Internal Revenue Service no longer completing tax returns for free. H&R Block has over 10,000 locations worldwide and serves over 20 million clients annually. The company services about 21 million clients in 21 countries. Their main office occupies an entire block at Main and 44th Streets in Kansas City.
H&R Block is the largest provider and marketer of Refund Anticipation Loans, followed by Jackson Hewitt.
H&R Block was the former owner of CompuServe, which used their mainframes during off-peak hours as a computer time-sharing service. CompuServe was sold in 1997 in a three way transaction between AOL and Worldcom. AOL currently owns CompuServe.
On the November 30, 2004 episode of Jeopardy!, where Ken Jennings lost his 75th appearance on the national quiz show, a fact was learned about H&R Block. The fact was that most of H&R Block's "70,000 seasonal white-collar employees work only four months a year." This was learned when Jennings incorrectly responded to FedEx as the question to the Final Jeopardy! clue, which should have been answered with H&R Block. H&R Block subsequently offered Jennings personal finance and tax preparation services for life.
External links
- H&R Block (http://www.hrblock.com/)
- H&R Block Canada (http://www.hrblock.ca/)
- Yahoo! - H&R Block, Inc. Company Profile (http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/10/10689.html)