Executive View
If it were not for a tightfisted great-aunt, Henry Bloch is convinced he would be just another Kansas City stockbroker today. The rich spinster rebuffed the ex-serviceman's plea in 1946 for a $50,000 loan to launch a large company that would sell office services to small businesses; she only lent him $5,000, Had she been more openhearted, Henry Bloch believes, he and his brother Richard would have started too grandly and quickly gone broke.
The Blochs got another tough break—or so it seemed—some years later. By 1962 their H. & R. Block Co. was doing well enough in tax consulting to go public, but a big underwriter backed out at the last minute. The brothers were forced to keep most of the stock for themselves. Today they have by far the nation's largest tax-preparation firm, and the shares of President Henry, Chairman Richard and their families are worth $81 million.
This season, more than 10 million taxpayers will go to H. & R. Block with all the gusto of visiting the dentist. So it is rather appropriate that Henry Bloch, 56, the chief executive and prime-time TV pitchman, looks like a small-town tooth driller. He is a direct, plain-spoken Midwesterner in a brown suit and brown shoes, the type of fellow for whom the word unpretentious was invented. For his prodigious charities and civic good works, fellow citizens named him Mr. Kansas City, but he hides most of his trophies and awards in a small, dark closet.
More than anybody else, Bloch knows the mood of Americans as the ides of April draw near. The 8,445 H. &R. Block offices and storefronts become confessionals, in which Americans pour out their complaints, fears and frustrations (for an average fee of $25) to the company's approximately 50,000 moonlighting teachers, accountants and other tax preparers.
Bloch's battalions tell him that tax tensions run high. "Talk of tax revolt has been grossly overstated," says he, "but it probably wouldn't take too much to trigger some type of rebellion." He frets that a demagogue may catch the public fancy by thundering for reducing taxes without reducing spending.
"People are mad because they don't understand the system," Bloch believes. "The old and the poor do not understand why they should pay anything to anyone. Retired people complain about paying taxes on interest income. Middle-income people feel that they are grossly overtaxed because Government programs are aimed at aiding lower-income people."
Nobody seems to have any idea how much taxes he pays in a year, Bloch finds. All each person knows is what is withheld from every paycheck. The loudest complaint is that the IRS tables did not provide for enough withholding in 1978, so many taxpayers still owe the Government money, and that hurts. Some people simply do not file returns and hope that the IRS does not catch them.