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H&R Block Goofs on Its Own Taxes 170

Posted by Zonk from the that-can't-be-a-good-sign dept.
omar.nyc writes "Red Herring reports tax preparation giant H&R Block, manufacturer of TaxCut and other tax software, goofed on its own taxes. The miscalculation on its state income taxes are liable by $32 million. This will reduce Block's fiscal year 2005 earnings by $0.02 per share and $0.02 per share in fiscal year 2004." From the article: "Besides the problems that Block had with its own tax prep needs, the company also experienced difficulties with the technology in its offices last month that hit its bottom line early in tax season. 'Technology problems across the H&R Block network in early January impacted our ability to serve clients in those crucial early weeks,' said Block Chairman Mark A. Ernst. He said the problems had been corrected, but they impacted the company's ability to serve 250,000 clients at that time of year."
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H&R Block Goofs on Its Own Taxes More

H&R Block Goofs on Its Own Taxes

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  • hope they paid for the insurance!

  • Use a professional tax service (Score:4, Funny)

    by dotslashdot ( 694478 ) on Sunday February 26, 2006 @05:52AM (#14803299)
    They should really have someone professional do their taxes.

  • So? (Score:2)

    by Eideewt ( 603267 )
    This is amusing and all, but is it really news for nerds? It's barely even stuff that matters.

    • Re:So? (Score:2)

      by dgb2n ( 85206 )
      This also came out Thursday when they released their earnings:

      http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/060223/20060223005898.html ?.v=1 [yahoo.com]

      This only really matters if you can do something with the information. Between the time that this news came out and the end of market close on Friday, the stock dropped 8.6%.

      This might have mattered on Thursday.
    • I suppose it matters a lot if you're a stock holder... and I assume this was supposed to be a stable company...

      other than that, it definatly should have gotten the foot, because thats the only reason I'm here
    • What are you talking about, I just dropped off all my tax papers with them. Damn the news for now coming out sooner.

  • Tax Instant Refund Scam; Loan, not Refund (Score:5, Informative)

    by layer3switch ( 783864 ) on Sunday February 26, 2006 @05:59AM (#14803312)
    According to H&R Block's website;
    http://www.hrblock.com/ [hrblock.com]
    "Fast Money
    Walk into an office with your taxes, and walk out with an Instant Money Refund Anticipation loan check. Up to $9,999 based on your refund amount. Money in your hands fast."

    People, don't ever EVER get your tax refund this way. You may be in a financial jam or just impatient to get your money, but this is sure way to loose your money in a blink of an eye, and possibly the most stupidist thing you can ever do. The % you loose due to interest rate for loan in this case is highly unregulated and its easy to get scammed.

    Here is a quick article on pending lawsuit against H&R Block in California, posted on MSNBC.
    http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11373754/ [msn.com]

    Just wait 3 weeks and get your full refund (if you don't owe that is), or ready to get charged 500% on that refund.
    • The OP left some things out of context. FTFA:
      H&R Block said the lawsuit lacks merit.

      So as you can see, H&R block did nothing wrong. Nothing to see here.

    • Individual tax preparation has become a commodity and a very competitive industry. Anyone with a computer and $200 worth of software can prepare taxes...especially the 1040-EZ that many low income people file. Since they can't make much on the preparation, Refund Anticipation Loans (RALs) have become a major source of revenue and growth for many tax preparers...not just the big names like HRB and Jackson.

      With the help of large banking institutions like BankOne [bankonetrp.com], mom and pop accounting businesses can offer R

      • Why the hell would I want to help stupid people get more money, given that I don't plan to scam it away from them myself?

        Every refund application that fails completely is one less bit of tax I have to pay (in theory).
        • Well, it would be a popular choice for libertarians, or other anti-government types. It would force Congress to try and raise taxes, making people angry, and maybe getting some incumbents tossed out of office. Or just maybe, some of the waste might get cut.
      • If you're spending $200 on $50 software (or free [irs.gov], if your AGI is less than 50k) then I don't want fiscal advice from you!
        • If you're spending $200 on $50 software...

          I'm sorry. I've developed tax software for the last 15 years and I guess I assumed that you would understand that there is a difference between the $39.95 tax software you buy at Staples and the software [google.com] a small firm might use to process 500 or more returns per day. If you still think the free stuff is good enough, then just for fun, go figure the tax on a wash sale or calculate depreciation on all your office equipment using the MACRS/MQC method (assuming you've

    • $9,999? Just below the 10k level that you have to report to the Feds? At least H&R Block got that one right :)
    • Just wait 3 weeks and get your full refund

      Why wait when E-filing cuts that time in half.

      My Tax Preparer (an independent, no national chain) had an option to E-File direct deposit into your personal checking account. I usually get my refund back in less than 2 weeks, this year I got it in less than 5 days, which is the fastest I've ever seen it come back. I've also found that the earlier you do your taxes the faster it seems to come back.

      • I usually get my refund back in less than 2 weeks, this year I got it in less than 5 days, which is the fastest I've ever seen it come back.

        E-file batches are processed on Thursday. If your e-file is accepted in the Thursday batch you should get your direct deposit by the next Friday. There's a table in this publication [irs.gov].

      • What's even better is to do a little budgeting and figure out what your tax bill will be next year. Then, figure out what your witholding should be so that you end up breaking even, or paying just a little.

        That way, you have your money all year long, instead of waiting for a refund - or paying money to get an e-file, or even worse, paying fees for a refund loan. You can do your taxes at your leisure and pay the small amount you owe whenever you feel like it.

        Why let the government have your money any longe
    • Don't fear-monger and don't blow shit out of proportion just to make your point. If you do that then the terrorists have already won.
      Yes, there is a fee associated with doing their taxes, and there is a fee to get their 'instant refund' - but you saying that they are 'charging 500% on that refund' is just sensationalizing the event.

      Charging 500% means charging $500 on a $100 refund - that is not what is happening here.
      They (and by proxy, you) are using voodoo math to come up with scary numbers but hiding t
      • For the record, $40,000 ain't poor.

        The ONLY three reasons to have a "professional" do your taxes are (1) you're getting a sizable refund and want a RAL, (2) You're of below-average ability when it comes to numbers, and need someone else to do them, (3) you're a homeowner, a business owner, or make enough to hit the A.M.T.

        For all the rest of us, H&R block is a scam. If you passed high school, you can pay your taxes. If you have kids or go to school, there are a small handful of tax credits you care abo
        • My father would take in boxes of stuff for deductions he was entitled to and they'd still just do a 1040-EZ and tell him he owed the government on top of the ~$5000 they took out of him that year. He started going to a real professional and started getting back ~$4000. H&R block probably hosed him an entire year of wages in tax refunds over the *many* years he was having them do his taxes.

      • Well, the APR that's usually calculated is based solely on the fee for the RAL. And if you call it an APR there's nothing voodoo about the math, that's how an APR is calculated.

        Yes, H&R Block will often get people more money, even after fees, than they would have gotten on their own. But they're still sleazy people for the most part. I took the H&R Block tax class, though I wound up working for myself and now for a CPA firm. The woman who taught the class told us about how she would help the pe

      • MiB (Score:2)

        by typical ( 886006 )
        That's what the MebiByte fuckers did with hard drive space, and we all know how much I hate them.

        Uh, no. The *hard drive* manufacturers started using decimal units (which, while obviously unintuitive and irritating and profitable for them, does at least make SI sense).

        Other people who wanted some degree of consistency (and not two different types of "MB"), pushed for the use of "MiB".

        You want to blame someone, blame Seagate, not the IEEE.
      • So tax preparers are all terrorists now?

        Good god, I thought the bullshit had been stretched thin as it was.

        The poster you responded to does have a point -- "refund anticipation" loans ARE often ripoffs and it's a good idea to avoid them unless you REALLY REALLY need the money now. I filed in early February and I had my refund on the 13th. My full refund. (though I did have to pay a little for the state filing/prep and the fed prep, fed E-file was free for me). If you are smart enough to plan ahead financial
        • No, actually I was joking.

          The note in your sig is pretty cool - I actually had a chance to see the Soviet Space Shuttle back in 1993, from a fairly close distance (static display, riding piggy back on the back of a jumbo jet, as I recall.) I didn't fully appreciate what I was seeing, but given that I got my hands on a MiG31 (ok, I touched it with one hand) and a MiG29, saw the Hind and Hokum fly, and had a few minutes to stare into the ginormous engines of a MiG25 ... I was working on sensory overload so I
          • Pretty impressive stuff. The An-225 is the world's biggest aircraft, I think. It's even bigger than the C-5 Galaxy.
            • If the An-225 is the monster with like 10 rows of tires under the center of mass, three engines on each side and a tail that looks like a massively wide letter H - yea, I think it was on the back of one of those - and if I recall correctly I saw one of those fly (without the shuttle on the back.) I will have to dig up the photo album, I think I saw it up pretty close too before it flew (the one that flew, w/o the piggy-backed shuttle.)

              It was over a decade ago, so details are pretty fuzzy.
              Unless I wasn't su
              • The An-225 was designed to carry Buran around, so I could tell you for sure that that's what you saw even without your description, which confirms it. :)

                By comparison, the US shuttle is carried around by a Boeing 747, which was not originally designed for this purpose (it was designed as a competitor to the C-5 Galaxy and as a passenger hauler, and turned out to be a good shuttle carrier with internal modifications and additional vertical stabilizers added to the tail surfaces). The two SCAs were sourced fr

  • Place the blame where it is due... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by physicsphairy ( 720718 ) on Sunday February 26, 2006 @06:08AM (#14803336)
    With Congress, the ones who engineered this incomprehensible beast of a code which is volumes long and confusing enough that even a large tax-filing corporation can get caught by it.

    Personally, I don't see how anyone can reasonably expect to avoid becoming a criminal with more laws on the books than can possibly be read in a human lifespan. I am completely unacquainted with 99% of the laws in this country, and for all I know I may have unwittingly violated a fair portion of those.

    The law should be terse enough for Joe Schmoe to learn it all in a high school class or in a few weeks of diligent study. Anything more is just plain unreasonable.
    • Yeah, they used to do that in the old days when there were only like 10 things remember, but some people thought that was too much and made like 7 stuffs "not to do" list. But even those were too much for some people, so they started something called "confession" thingy and few people took it literally and do crazy things like fasting and what not.

      Needless to say, that didn't turn out to be such a bright idea.
    • The tax code is that way because the rich and powerful and the corporations have lobbied the congress to make it that way. This way they can game system. Sure once in a while it might bight them but win way more then they lose.

      As for the average joe I will quote a taxi driver from the middle east I once saw on TV. "The govt lets us cheat a little on our taxes so we will look the other way when they cheat us a lot".

      • The tax code is that way because the rich and powerful and the corporations have lobbied the congress to make it that way. This way they can game system.

        Sure, rich, powerful corporations want to game the individual income tax system...

        The real reason the tax code got the way it is, is because we have a congress made up of lots of people, and some of them want to use taxes to influence behavior, others want to use taxes to redistribute wealth, and yet others want to be able to point to a narrowly focused tax

    • Re:Place the blame where it is due... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Honestly
      I'm a lead at an Intuit (TurboTax) calllcenter, hence the reason why this is me being a coward.

      And even though some people over estimate the complexity of taxes, they aren't that extreme. For most people, what they enter is not entirely complicated by a significant degree. Hell, most people only need to fill out a 1040EZ, (while yes, I know that a deal of /.ers would need to fill out 1099-DIV, B, R, INTs, etc., though the majority of the population would not need to) as they're living paycheck to p
      • while yes, I know that a deal of /.ers would need to fill out 1099-DIV, B, R, INTs, etc., though the majority of the population would not need to

        Unless you are paying diviends or interest, you don't need to fill out a 1099-DIV or 1099-INT - you get those from someone paying you - and they need to go on the 1040 schedule B (if you've got enough of them). 1099-R's come when you are taking a distribution from your retirement fund - and that's a bad idea if you're younger than 60 (unless you like giving the

        • You are 100% correct, 1099's are generally forms you receive, not fill out.

          That said, I believe the AC was implying that the majority of the population never even gets these forms. At worst, they might have a 1099-int from a savings account.

          So the proposed "majority" has to fill out a 1040ez, with information from one or two w2's and a single 1099-int.

          I don't know how representative that is, but I'd say that it is at least plausible that a lot of US taxpayers have taxes that simple. It would certainly cover
          • I'd buy that. I was sort of saying that he was mixing apples and oranges with his statement.

            I'd also say that it doesn't take much to go from an easy return one year to a difficult one the next. Divorce, buying a house, selling some stock, having a kid - all of those things add to the complexity of the return.

            And if you do a little side business for yourself after hours, watch out :)

        • 1099-R's come when you are taking a distribution from your retirement fund - and that's a bad idea if you're younger than 60 (unless you like giving the government 10% of that distribution right off the top).

          That's not always the case. There are various reasons you can take money out of a 401k/403B that don't incurr penalties, even if you are younger than 60. For example, I pulled out some money to help keep me in school full-time. You still have to treat it as regular income. In my case, I didn't pay a

    • Personally, I don't see how anyone can reasonably expect to avoid becoming a criminal with more laws on the books than can possibly be read in a human lifespan. I am completely unacquainted with 99% of the laws in this country, and for all I know I may have unwittingly violated a fair portion of those.

      This is a really BIG picture issue.

      Not some trivial idiotic shit, like do we build a windmill farm on Ted Kennedy's Hyannisport compound, or how do we save the snail darter by driving the Klamath Farmers

      • Some of law isn't that bad -- it's common sense. I can't rattle off the exact set of laws delineating what constitutes murder, but I know that if I don't kill anyone, I'm probably going to be okay.

        This doesn't apply to some large (and important) chunks of law, like tax law. However, it does help.

        Sometimes, however, there are things that are counterintitive, and in civil law, things are less clear (which affects trademarks, copyright, employment contracts, etc).

        For example, "Suppose V is drowning. D, an O
  • IIRC, there are 480 US tax forms and 6,000 pages of tax law containing 75 million words.
    • "IIRC, there are 480 US tax forms and 6,000 pages of tax law containing 75 million words."

      That might be; but, how many of them do most companies actually use? No doubt companies make similar (if not worse) mistakes every year. However, we'd usually expect more of a company who's business is to understand the tax laws to generate reliable and accurate documentation for those of us who don't understand (or want to understand) how to do our own taxes. If they can't even get their own taxes right, why sho
  • After a few years of TurboTax, I went with the cheaper TaxCut this year, paying for both Federal and State programs. The Federal is OK if a bit sparse with explanations. The State is just awful, even by the low standards of state income tax software.

    When I told it I was a part-year resident (awfully common for young people who move a lot) it simply told me to hunt down (on my own) and fill out a series of Ohio tax forms and then feed it the results after I'd done practically all of the work manually! The
  • H&R Block do people's personal taxes. I think you can probably trust them with that task, most of the time.

    Company taxes are a whole different thing. The rules are different, are more complex, and change often. In many instances, the rules are somewhat rubbery, but what you can get away with will come down to how good your lawyers are. Also, while H&R Block staff do the taxes of hundreds of thousand of people every year, their accountants only do the company taxes once a year. Mistakes are likelier.
  • Of course, it can't be as simple as just simplying the tax laws -- every industry has their own favorite exemption or quirk that they've been lobbying for -- but boy, would it be nice if the tax laws were uber-simple. Something like "plug in total assets and total change in assets since last year, and find tax".

    A friend pointed out today that if the typical American worker wastes a single day on taxes, that's hundreds of thousands of man-years wasted every year.
    • > Of course, it can't be as simple as just simplying the tax laws Why not? My preference would be to repeal the 16th Amendment and replace it with nothing. Short of that this is the next best thing: http://www.fairtax.org/ [fairtax.org]
    • Undefined term "total assets"
      How much is your car worth today?
      How much is your pc worth today?
      How much is that bright idea that you just came up with, but haven't checked with the patent office today?

      Et cetera.

    • Flat Tax! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Brian Stretch ( 5304 ) *
      No problem, we could switch over to the Flat Tax [stanford.edu] very quickly. Take your income, subtract your personal and dependent deductions (well over $40K for a family of four), and pay a percentage of what's left (usually 17% in American proposals). Besides saving $billions in labor, it will likely increase compliance as it will be less worthwhile to dodge it.

      Unfortunately, reformers are split between the Flat Tax and Fair Tax [fairtax.org], aka national sales tax. The problem with the Fair Tax plan is that it will require the
      • Neither of those are a reform, they're a gift to the wealthy disguised as fairness.

        What we really need is a truly progressive income tax, on a sliding scale based on income, with as few holes as possible and a concerted effort to plug any that pop up.

        I'd say a sliding scale from 0% to 95% would be about right. A person making less than $15k/yr would pay 0%, bill gates would pay 95%, and everybody else would pay somewhere in between.

        That would be a truly fair system.

        • Re:Flat Tax! (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Dante333 ( 25148 )
          How is that fair? Bill Gates deserves to have more of his income confiscated because... Really I want to know. How is taking more money from someone just because they have it fair? On the flip side, how do you justify giving government benefits to someone who has not contributed? In 2003 the top 5% of income earners paid 54.36% of the income taxes. The top 10% paid 65.84%. The top 50% paid 96.54%. That means the bottom 50% of income earners paid a whopping 3.46% of all income taxes. The only way th
          • It would be more fair.

            You see, the wealthy benefit much more from the protection of government than the poor and middle classes. They should have to pay more. And the top 5% of earners should have to pay MORE than 54.36% of taxes.

            And I'm sorry, the "Fair Tax" concept WOULD be a gift to the weathy. Only a tax on wealth can be fair.
            • You're not looking for a tax system to fund government, your're looking for a way to transfer wealth from those have earned it to those who have not, all in the name of equality of outcome. That is not fair. That is government theft so you can sleep better at night, knowing that everyone life sucks equally.

              • You're not looking for a tax system to fund government, your're looking for a way to transfer wealth from those have earned it to those who have not, all in the name of equality of outcome. That is not fair. That is government theft so you can sleep better at night, knowing that everyone life sucks equally.

                Someone's got to pay for all the stuff the government does, and Bill Gates is far more able to do so than the janitors in his campus. 95% is a disaster waiting to happen, but 40% is doable (he pays no

          • You overlook two things,

            1) Rich people pay more money in taxes because they have more money to pay. You mention
            5% of income earners paid 54.36% of the income taxes
            but this statistic is meaningless since we don't know what % of the wealth these top 5% have (ie 10% of $100 is twice as much as 10% of $50).

            2) Rich people are able to leverage their money to a much greater degree than poorer people. At the lower end of the scale this means things like being able to afford university or maybe just affording a comp
        • Neither of those are a reform, they're a gift to the wealthy disguised as fairness.

          The FairTax is progressive, because of the universal rebate. Most flat tax plans also have a large standard deduction so that those with low incomes pay zero or negative net taxes. And both could get rid of FICA which is the most regressive tax we have.
          • While I agree that the Social Security tax is insanely regressive, the way to fix it is to merge it into standard income taxes. Let's make it a REAL national retirement plan for the poor and middle class, and use the money from the insanely wealthy to do it.

      • No problem, we could switch over to the Flat Tax very quickly. Take your income, subtract your personal and dependent deductions (well over $40K for a family of four), and pay a percentage of what's left (usually 17% in American proposals). Besides saving $billions in labor, it will likely increase compliance as it will be less worthwhile to dodge it.

        A graduated tax is not really any more complicated than a flat tax. OK, you need to make 3 calculations instead of one (or use a table), but that's really

        • Actually 17% would work right about perfect as a flat tax, given zero deductions.
          Totally flat tax. Seventeen percent. Starting at the first dollar.

          Yes people go all crazy with deductions for children, married vs single, standard deduction, graduated tax rates, all that jazz - but boil it all down and look at the real taxes you paid (assuming you had a real income, not on the bottom or top 3% of the scale making zero or millions) and I will bet that you paid somewhere in the very tight range of 16% to 18%,
        • Huh? Why does the "Fair Tax" *require* a repeal of the 16th Amendment? The 16th Amendment merely *allows* congress to tax incomes, it doesn't *force* them to do so.

          Cause if you don't your gonna wind up with a Fair Tax AND an income tax. Allowing congress to do something is practically inviting them to do it. Especially if it gets them more money to spend.
      • Eliminating the mortgage deduction would severly crimp the housing market. Don't look for that to happen soon.

        If you were to move to something like that, you'd have to phase it in VERY gradually.

    • Something like "plug in total assets and total change in assets since last year, and find tax".

      ...which probably wouldn't have helped out H&R Block at all, because they miscalculated their liabilities (which I assume you're going to have to subtract from assets anyway).

      Congress could certainly simplify the tax code in a few ways (get rid of the credits and some of the more esoteric deductions, move the rest "above the line", eliminate the phaseouts, and then probably raise the standard deduction and

  • That's a roundabout way of saying "couldn't"
  • They [taxcut.com] should have bought TurboTax [turbotax.com].
  • I heard they even went along with themselves to their own IRS hearing -- not as a legal representative, but to explain the tax laws.

  • The folly of corporate taxes (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Shivetya ( 243324 ) on Sunday February 26, 2006 @10:47AM (#14803829) Homepage Journal
    If anything this should give people a clue that the tax system is broken. Not only is it overly complicated it also a fraud perpetuated on the American people. It relies on ignorance and to some extent class warfare to continue in its current form.

    Watch politicians. They will consistenly play up the fact that corporations don't pay their fair share while conviently relying on the fact that any taxes paid by a corporation are paid by its customers. It is this embedded taxaxtion that hides the true amount of tax load that is place on every citizen of the country. The best time to witness the hypocrisy of Congress is when certain corporations report their profit. The Congressmen will make big speeches about how all that money is being "stolen" from the American people and that the profits are obscene whereas the only obscenity is Congress's appetite for OUR money. They love to ignore the profit per share which is the true measure of a corporations profitability all because they know most Americans are ignorant of how the system works.

    The system is made so complex to keep the dirty little secret from being easily identifiable. If the Congress and Administration were truly after true tax reform they would make the system transparent. This can be done in one of two ways. A flat tax or a National Sales Tax (aka The Fair Tax). While neither system is perfect they both offer something that the current system doesn't and that is transparency.

    Besides being overly complex, which results in hundreds of billions from individuals and corporations to stay in compliance, it is chocked full of exceptions for every little group that manages to bend Congresses's ear. They have created a self sustaining system. Groups give money as gifts and reelection money to maintain their status. None of them have the people's intrest in their hearts, not Congress, not the Administration, and certainly not these groups.

    It is a total fraud.
    • You said: If anything this should give people a clue that the tax system is broken. Not only is it overly complicated it also a fraud perpetuated on the American people. It relies on ignorance and to some extent class warfare to continue in its current form.

      TFS said: admitted it had miscalculated its own state income taxes

      Yet for comment is entirely about Federal Tax Law; something to whcih this story is not even related. It is about the tax laws of the state of California. Furthermore, TFA doesn't even

  • The miscalculation on its state income taxes are liable by $32 million.

    Ummm, guys, that is NOT how the English language works.
  • I have a friend who owns an H&R block franchise, and they have been screwing them. Instead of giving the employees a browser based tax app, they instist on installing local copys of their crappy software each year. It is buggy as hell, and the user interface blows (IMHO).

    Also, they are now insisting that they set up theese dinky Wal-Mart kiosks. Yes, they might get extra revenues, but franchise holders who already are running at full capacity are forced to take on more than they can handle.

    H&R block
  • I find it most interesting that virtually all 'honest' accounting mistakes are in favor of the person/company making the mistake. I'm not saying that H&R block had any intention to get away with fraud at some point, but it is an interesting phenominon.
  • I went to HRBlock this year for the second time, but in a different state than last year (US state, not state of mind). I went there because I'd had HRBlock do it last year, and thought they could pull up my previous information. No dice. A national chain company (well, mostly franchises) using all the same software on a network but there's no way to get the information between offices. Unless that changes next year, I will probably not use them again.
  • Example of H&R Block customer service:

    Me: The online state tax interview is stuck in an endless loop.

    HRBlock: Please wait for your state product to be available, then choose it, and complete it. Enjoy!

    Me: Um ... it's *available*, I'm using it, but it is stuck in a loop. It asks like three income questions, then goes back to the beginning. There is no way around it.

    HRBlock: Use the jump menu to jump to any part of the interview. Enjoy!

    Me: Is this thing on? It won't let me jump past income, but that's

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