H&R Block, Shaker Heights
Feb 24th, 2003, by Alex Zorach
This photo shows the interior of the H&R Block office in Shaker Heights, Ohio, where I worked during the 2003 tax season. This office, located on Chagrin Blvd just south of Van Aken Blvd, in a commercial and shopping area, is near the southern border of Shaker Heights, with the city of Cleveland, and many of the customers in this area lived in Cleveland. The office was rarely empty like in this picture, so I took the rare opportunity to take this photo.
H&R Block was actually the largest corporate employer I have ever been employed by, and after working there, I have a very favorable impression of the management of the company as a whole. I think H&R Block, unfortunately, gets a very bad rap. It was a great place to work. The employees were intelligent, funny, delightfully quirky, friendly, and cared a lot about the people whose tax returns they were doing. The commission structure was also carefully designed to set up good incentives. Contrary to what most people believe, employees are never rewarded for offering a "refund anticipation loan" or any other sort of loan or fast refund. The management was very up front with us during training--these loans are not beneficial to the customers, and H&R Block provides them only to get customers in the door. Once you are doing the customer's taxes, the goal is to talk them out of the refund loan, explaining that they'll get more money and that the loan just makes more money go to the banks. The goal is always to do as much as possible to maximize the long-term financial state of the customer or taxpayer.
Working at H&R Block was a highly influential experience at my life; it gave me insights into the lives and finances of people from different ages and socio-economic backgrounds, and helped me form my views on business, economic, and politics, especially influencing my views on tax reform. I would encourage you to check out my writing on the topic of tax, especially my thoughts on payroll taxes and sustainable taxation. Perhaps more importantly, working here also inspired me to start my own business. When doing taxes of people who walked in off the street, I was impressed by how many of them were running profitable businesses, both as side projects and as a primary source of income. While working here, I started my business, Sustainable Computing, which I ran successfully for a little over two years, and which, after the end of tax season, became a full-time endeavour.