By Sam Burnett
The Kansas City Star
(TNS)
Henry and Richard Bloch are without question among the greatest philanthropists in Kansas City’s history. During their lives, they gave generously of their substantial wealth while remaining humble and engaged citizens of our community. After their deaths, trusts and foundations seeded with their fortunes continue to enrich our city in countless ways.
Yet the same cannot be said for the industry that produced their wealth. It’s true that their company, H&R Block, is one of our city’s foremost corporate success stories. However, that success has been built solidly on the backs of ordinary Americans. The Blochs originated the industry of private tax preparation when the federal government discontinued providing these services to the public in 1955. The costs of these prep services act as taxes in addition to those imposed by federal and state governments. These expenses are measured partly in additional hard-earned dollars, certainly, but perhaps more importantly in endless hours of wasted time and unfathomable amounts of frustration.
H&R Block and companies like it—Jackson Hewitt, Intuit’s TurboTax, Liberty Tax Service and others—have consistently and consciously used their corporate power to stymie efforts that would streamline the tax preparation and filing process for the vast majority of Americans.
In 2024, the IRS began a pilot program called Direct File allowing taxpayers to file their returns directly with the federal government, using an intuitive interview-style process. In 2025, the program expanded from 12 states to 25, allowing millions more Americans to skip paying a private tax prep company and, in the process, claim billions of dollars in tax credits they might not have otherwise. Late last year, the Trump administration abruptly canceled Direct File. While the reasons for this decision (like many made by Trump and his advisers) are opaque and cannot be definitively laid at the feet of the major tax prep companies, there are strong reasons to wonder whether those businesses had a lot to do with it, and to imagine they would cheer the development.
Recommended Articles
Taxes November 5, 2025
IRS Says Direct File Won’t Be Around for 2026 Tax Filing Season
H&R Block and its competitors have spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying for the end of Direct File and other commonsense measures to make tax time easier on regular people. They have brought their immense corporate power to bear on sympathetic members of Congress, arguing that a free and direct filing system is redundant and places too much power in the hands of an inefficient IRS.
It’s arguably true that Direct File is redundant. It replicates (and often improves on) the privately run system that has made these companies massively profitable for decades. The key difference is that Direct File was free, saving many Americans hundreds of dollars a year in tax preparation fees. Largely because the system was easy to use, accurate, and (it bears repeating) free, substantial majorities of Direct File users rated the system as “excellent” or “above average.”
I do not mean to denigrate Henry and Richard Bloch, their families or even the company they built. There seems to be no indication that H&R Block broke any laws in lobbying to oppose Direct File and other taxpayer-friendly measures. It’s their right to lobby our government, and they were certainly successful in doing so. The wealth created by this company has done a great deal to improve our city in many ways.
But a question remains: Why are Americans pushed toward paying for tax preparation services that the IRS has proven in resounding fashion it can provide to them for free? Eventually, the federal government should take most taxpayers out of the tax prep process altogether and calculate their bill for them, as many other countries do. Implementing such a system would be a monumental political effort (although, not much of an administrative one).
Until that time, the least we can do is bring back Direct File, regardless of what the tax prep giants say about it. Americans have a big enough bill at tax time, they shouldn’t have to pay more to private companies just to figure out what they owe.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Sam Burnett is a Kansas City, MO-based attorney.
Photo credit: Raysonho @ Open Grid Scheduler/Scalable Grid Engine/Wikimedia Commons
_______
©2026 The Kansas City Star. Visit kansascity.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency LLC.
Sign in to get access to this free resource, and all of our whitepapers and reports.
Download this content today!
Register Now Already registered? Click here to Log In
Tags: H&R Block, Income Taxes, IRS, IRS Direct File, tax preparation, Taxes
