Founder of H&R Block dies at 96

Tax-services company was family business from beginning

After returning from military service in World War II, 24-year-old Henry Bloch started a two-man bookkeeping shop in his home town of Kansas City, Mo., that offered tax preparation as a sideline.

He spent years building the business and placed a helpwanted newspaper advertisement seeking a full-time accountant. The only one to respond was his mother, who recommended that he keep the business in the family by hiring his younger brother, Richard.

The business would become H&R Block, the world’s largest tax-services provider. Henry Bloch died Tuesday at 96 in Kansas City. The company confirmed the death in a statement but did not provide further details.

The business boomed in the mid-1950s as the Internal Revenue Service began discontinuing its free tax-preparation services, and the Bloch brothers began advertising their discount tax service in a paper. The company became known by the brothers’ initials, substituting the last letter in Bloch to “K” out of fear that customers might mispronounce or misspell the name.

The brothers used a tweaked spelling of their surname for the company. Richard Bloch once said he was worried that customers might say the firm had “blotched” their taxes. Their family name was, in fact, pronounced “block.”

Henry Bloch served as the company’s chief executive and Richard was chairman. In its first tax season, H&R Block prepared about 2,700 returns and brought in $20,000. The next year, revenue tripled.

H&R Block, which went public in 1962, expanded rapidly and eventually had hundreds of offices nationally and a presence internationally. To meet demand, the Bloch brothers created income-tax schools to train tax preparers.

Starting in 1972, Henry Bloch began appearing in TV ads for his company — a rare step for a chief executive at the time. “They thought that would have more of an effect on customers than an announcer saying, ‘Go to H&R Block,’ ” Bloch told USA Today in 2005.

Bloch, who conveyed a trustworthy Midwestern persona, spent 20 years as the public face of the company in those commercials, touting 17 reasons why taxpayers should trust H&R Block with their taxes. The ads typically ending with the catchphrase, “What can we find for you?”

Bloch’s commercials proved so effective that other businesses hired him to star in their commercials. He hawked cars, airlines and hotels; he once jumped out of a suitcase in an ad for the Comfort Inn hotel chain, according to Investor’s Business Daily.

Henry Wollman Bloch was born July 30, 1922, in Kansas City, where his father was a lawyer.

Bloch served in the Army Air Forces as a navigator during World War II and flew more than 30 combat missions over Europe. His military decorations include four awards of the Air Medal.

Richard Bloch, who survived a cancer scare, left the company in 1982 to focus his energies on cancer research advocacy. He died in 2004. Henry Bloch stepped down as chief executive in 1992 and retired as chairman in 2000.

Since its inception, H&R Block has prepared more than 625 million tax returns and now prepares 1 in every 7 U.S. taxpayers’ returns, according to the company’s website. The company’s charitable H&R Block Foundation, founded in 1974, has donated millions of dollars to education and health grant-making.

Henry Bloch’s wife of 62 years, Marion Helzberg Bloch, died in 2013. They had four children.

Son Thomas Bloch wrote a 2011 biography of his father, called Many Happy Returns.