By ERIC BARTON
Oakland's East Bay Express this week features this tell-all story written by a reporter who worked as a tax preparer for Kansas City-based H&R Block. The reporter, Steve Koppman, writes that Block preys on the poor, pushes bogus "add ons" on its customers in order to drive up profits and employs people at minimum wage with false promises of bonuses.
Koppman enrolled in Block's tax-preparation course in October 2006, a course that potential employees pay $200 to take. Koppman then worked as a tax preparer in Walnut Creek, California. As a tax preparer, Koppman claims he was exposed to Block's "bizarrely byzantine" employee bonus program, which he describes this way:
Employees are given credit for each tax return they complete and additional Block service they sell. Employees also receive extra commission for each year of prior Block employment and each level of advanced training they attain. If the total commission on these items exceeds the employee's hourly base salary, the excess will be paid as a bonus several weeks after tax season is over..This legendary "bonus" is what employees pin their meager hopes on. I guess I was a relatively productive first-year worker, so even though I only worked part-time for Block for a month beyond training, I got a tiny "bonus" of about a dollar an hour, better than most of my first-year colleagues
As for the add-ons, Koppman claims many were bogus attempts to simply jack up the cost of tax preparation:
To make any money as preparers, we were pressed to push add-ons. These are services at the heart of lawsuits Block has paid more than $100 million to settle in recent years, according to company filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The Pitch left a voice mail and e-mailed Block's media-relations office in Kansas City this morning. This afternoon, I received this response from Vice President of Communications Linda McDougall:
Eric,While we would hope that your publication not link to an article we believe to be inaccurate, we ask that you identify the article as an opinion piece and not as a news story.
Our statement is as follows:
"We do not believe this article accurately describes the operations of H&R Block. The article reflects the opinion of only one person who does not appear to understand the company's training programs, products and services, and compensation guidelines, and who did not respond to the company's offer to personally address his concerns. It's disappointing that Mr. Koppman would choose to air his grievances in this manner."
Linda McDougall
H&R Block
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I truly appreciate you taking the time to post this. I really liked reading through it and am looking forward to more posts from you! Keep up the good work.
My experience as a worker . I worked my first few months finding several hundreds of dollars in errors amazingly all block returns . Did corrections of course , and helped my clients get the rightful money they had been charged significantly but had not been given all the deductions they were do even credit for low income. I couldnt belive i was working for a company that in further light continued to find errors are prior years . Had to stop was told to just do current returns , that iw asnt going to get commisions on fixing block returns only other companys. I could not work under those terms i was horrified no wonder they never fixed the earlier ones. I was never so tired in my life working so hard long hours. the old timers had quick hard cash lots of commissions , I continued to prepare the correct returns told the client to take it back to the guy who did it . I was fired off course but I wont do that to people and i was surprised about this procedure dont know if it is the same. But any company that wont stand behind it s returns and tell s you dont find past errors how do you do a return without looking at prior year and if you find young family with kids paying money and not receiving credits they are entitled to etc i wondered if they were taking them themslevs also wondered why the same people kept full time hours and didnt seem to care and yet were glorified and given bonuses and us newbies worked horrific hours and made way less. hmmmmm ps they made us work the whole season with the toilet flooding dureing the peek of flue season saying it always does that it is safe dont worry . it smelled was grwoing fungus and they said it always does that they rent that place , they were so un concerned about everything. I am surprised they are still in business. When I saw competitors coming in mind you this was early days when block had a long way to go to get web based computer . I would challenge anyone to look over all there old returns , especially before the computer checking we have now actually i dont know what they have now , should be a better system not relying on people to catch things. I would never work there after that. Wish i wouldl have thought to journal it all.
To the webmaster may I have permission to use some of the facts from your above post if I link back to your blog?
Is that the famous billionair investor Warren Buffet? What do you predict will happen will the Federal Estate Tax exemption. I guess I will check it out on responsbilewealth.com.
Lynn
Anonymous's comment surprise me. Did he or she work in numerous offices or hear similar comments from other offices? I'm also curious what is the criteria that defines "many offices" 5%, 10%, 20%,50%, etc. Just seems very vague and somewhat unfair. I'm not trying to creat ay conflict here but much of what that is being said makes no logical sense.
As business owner you are going to reward your high peforming, high quality employees not your buddies nephew if their is no financial incentive. Frankly, I don't see how there is any incentive with hiring/promoting cronies, or family members. End of the day there are goals a business owner is striving for so they are going to select the best employees to maximize their results.
You can add that the management of too many offices is mediocre at best and rife with cronism and nepotism. Also, if you have an education, you will not be allowed to succeed as the drop outs who proliferate must stick together to protect positions for themselves, their cronies, their offspring and the offspring of their cronies. Sad but true.
You know the last time I checked we are a democratic society and nobody forced this guy to work for H&R Block. I am sure there are alot of people who worked for HRB to gain professional experience when nobody else would take them and perhaps later they went on to bigger better positions, assuming they applied themselves and worked hard.
I sense the person making these comments wasn't successfull in his performance and has some misdirected hostilities. High quality, hard working professionals don't stay unemployed very long. Makes you wonder about his/her past performance in the workplace. Perhaps the individual in question was a slacker.
Of course this my opinion.
I have worked for the company for 42 yrs and
only a handfull of people worked the year
round in the Kansas City area. Don't think it
was any different on the west coast.
Hang in there is good qualities of the co.
I have worked for the company for 42 yrs and
only a handfull of people worked the year
round in the Kansas City area. Don't think it
was any different on the west coast.
Hang in there is good qualities of the co.
Steve Koppman's article "Life of a Worker Under HRBlock" is funny and true. As a Master Tax Advisor in the Berkeley office, with sixteen eyars experience,my colleagues and I endured the rite of passage that is the first year tax preparer.
Many of my colleagues include Tax Court Enrolled Agents, CPA's, bookkeepers, accountants, math professors and Ph.Ds. They are excellent tax professionals, with a deep and broad knowledge of the tax code, tax law changes, complex situations involving trusts, international applications, sales of business property, and other tax matters which even the intelligent amateur cannot master with tax software alone.
HRBlock was one of the first in corporate America to be sued for wrongful discharge when that cause of action first appeared in the nineteen eighties.
In the good old days of Henry Block and his brother, HRBlock tax preparers were full-time employees with a decent career.
In the nineteen eighties the company switched to a program of hiring part-time, seasonal preparers with no benefits. In hindsight, HRBlock was the bell-weather of the current system of part-time, out-sourced, down-sized, temporary, no benefit, no security work force which is typical of the 21st century American business model.
After reading the story I almost want to do my own taxes. H&RBlock is just one more evil company making billions on the backs of us taxpapers and workers and at the expense of our families.
As the editor of the story in question, I thought your item was a fair representation of our article. And let the record reflect that while Block's spokeswoman says here that our article is "inaccurate," to date the company has not communicated any such inaccuracies to us.
There are exaggerations and errors in Mr. Barton's brief re my story on H&R Block in the East Bay Express. I did not claim Block add-ons are "bogus" -- it's a more complex picture. I worked for Block in Oakland, not Walnut Creek. "Preys on the poor" is a matter of interpretation.
That being said, the statement by Ms. McDougall of H&R Block is incorrect -- I never received an offer from the company to discuss these issues. The Express tried interviewing Block but didn't get far. I don't think if she'd read my article she'd find any lack of understanding of the company's training programs, services or compensation guidelines.
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