• by Jennifer Coleman , March 30, 2005

Tax day cometh, but the dreaded day also marks the 50th anniversary of the American Dream tale of the Bloch brothers. In 1955 they ran a $100 newspaper advertisement that changed income tax filing forever. That year, Henry and Richard Bloch, who owned United Business Co., a small but successful bookkeeping business on Main Street in Kansas City, Mo., placed an ad in the Kansas City Star advertising "Income Tax! $5.00."

Previously, they had offered tax preparation as a courtesy to a few customers but were considering discontinuing it until a friend suggested they advertise the service. The story goes that the day the ad ran Henry was out with clients when he got a message to call his office. Richard answered breathlessly, "Hank, get back here as quick as you can. We've got an office full of people!"

Believe it or not, until the mid-1950s, the Internal Revenue Service actually completed tax returns at no charge for people who visited their local irs office, but errors were common and the service was eliminated. Serendipitously for the Blochs, their ad ran at the same time Kansas residents learned of the policy change.

Needless to say, business boomed and by 1962, there were 206 "h&r Block" offices in the United States. Friend or foe, today h&r Block has thousands of offices worldwide and has advertised on the Super Bowl and the Grammys. Henry Bloch became a familiar tv fixture in company ads from the 1970s to the 1990s. Undoubt-edly, the first $100 dollars in advertising the brothers spent were the best. Jennifer Coleman