Stock-In-Trade
Year-End Planning
December 3, 1997

Remember all the hoopla about the flat tax a few years ago? What ever happened to that? Accountants are what happened to that. Think about how the structure of our businesses would change if there weren't any Byzantine tax laws to misunderstand. An entire cadre of men in grey flannel suits would have to learn to be useful in some way.

But right now, those little grey guys are making money hand over fist. And that "new and improved" tax system is one of the reasons. Like every week in "Stock-In-Trade," we're going to look at a company that makes its money doing something that we've talked about in our other articles. Who better to examine this week than the mother of all tax preparers, H&R Block <% if gsSubBrand = "aolsnapshot" then Response.Write("(NYSE: HRB)") else Response.Write("(NYSE: HRB)") end if %>.

The company operates approximately 9,900 offices in the United States and abroad that offer tax counseling and preparation. Interim Services provides temporary office personnel and other employment services throughout North America. More than 90% of the company's revenues come from its tax services.

Check out a graph of the last year's stock performance. You can see that H&R Block has done pretty well lately. Five analysts follow the company and all of them rate Block as either a "buy" or an "outperform" with a projected five-year growth rate of 25%.

A couple of years ago H&R Block spun off its subsidiary CompuServe. Industry Snapshot took a look at the phenomenon at the time and TMF Templr had some interesting insights. Check it out and see what others are saying on the H&R Block message board.

(c) Copyright 1997, The Motley Fool. All rights reserved. This material is for personal use only. Republication and redissemination, including posting to news groups, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of The Motley Fool.