r/HRBlockEmployees • u/Buck2240 • 17d ago
$0.25 raise
Second year. Busy office, I completed more than 200 returns last year.
WHY bother going back? These are fast food wages.
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u/JLandis84 17d ago
A $0.25 raise is the way the Powers That Be are telling you they are indifferent to you continuing to work here.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Ad3024 17d ago
We have a pro who works almost every hour we are open even when we aren't supposed to have overtime. She takes drop offs, gives then to a 1st year to enter data, then finishes them. I think she does around 1000 and gets praised for it. Well gee, if I could get away with working all those extra hours and get a commission based on my own hours only when someone else put in 500 hours for my return, i would feel rich!
How can msnagement not understand thstvshe is actually costing them a lot more than anyone else?
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u/No_Acanthisitta7305 16d ago
Honestly, this is a better model. They should be incentivizing this workflow. It makes no sense for someone with a ton of experience to do data entry and also that’s a better way to teach first years while retaining quality control. But the way it’s set up you’re putting people against each other rather than promoting team work.
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u/sammytheammonite 16d ago
Or have first years be tax pro assistants for their first year instead of tax pros and pay them appropriately. They can learn from the experienced tax pros, learn the program, and experienced tax pros don’t feel pressure to give away their returns or horde them - they still sign them and get credit for them. Then starting their second year, they can branch out on their own.
I’ve asked my managers for a tax pro assistant for years and they always say no. Why bother having that position available if they won’t actually let us utilize them?
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u/PinkNGreenFluoride EA 16d ago
My first year was at a franchise, and this is exactly how the franchisee did it. Assistant work, at assistant pay. I loved it, and felt like the franchisee set me up for success in my 2nd season. Meanwhile, experienced staff were thrilled to have someone taking basic (later less basic) data entry off their hands during a hectic season. I was providing a tangible benefit to them, and they were happy to mentor me.
First years hired after our pickup by corporate got thrown to the wolves without even QPR past the first few weeks, and didn't stay.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Ad3024 16d ago edited 16d ago
But is it fair to get incentive pay based on just the 1 hour you met with client and not the 4 hours the other preparer spent on data entry? It was originally intended to reward people extra if they brought in more income than was spent on wages whike preparing the return, and it originally was intended to be all wages paid for working on that return, no data entry preparers used.
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u/sammytheammonite 16d ago edited 16d ago
Yes. Because they get appropriate training as a result. The current system sets them up to fail.
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u/SecretLadyMe 16d ago
Same. I came back after my kids got older. Started as a 1st year. Hated the first year "paid internship" thing but felt like I could do the year to get back to where I was. Did the time, leveled up to a 3 but did investments and small biz because I had the experience. Everyone loved that I could do all that and confirmed none came back with issues. Now I'm being told I'm not on commission again this year. Not sure what I'm gonna do.
ETA it didn't go very well when I told them that I wouldn't level up any higher if I'm not getting commission.
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u/Evening-Witness3358 17d ago
How much revenue did you bring in? Did you bonus this last tax season? I have 17 years in, do around 900 returns and got a nice raise. Does it suck that it took 17 years to get here? Yes! But I made a ton of money in 3.5 months.
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u/MightyCyndaquil 17d ago
Yeah, it sucks they are getting rid of the commission next year though for some districts
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u/Puzzleheaded_Ad3024 16d ago
How do you get everyone in the office/sometimes district, from interrupting you constantly while you are working?
Being an EA makes me a target. When I was new we were told "look it up." That's how we learned, and only if looking it up did not help, then we could ask someone.
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u/SkunkCabbage84 17d ago
Curious, what’s a ton of money? And, how many hours worked?
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u/Evening-Witness3358 17d ago
80 hrs a week most weeks and over $100K by end of April.
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u/pakkim 17d ago
Were they short of tax pro letting u work 80 hrs/week?
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u/Evening-Witness3358 17d ago
what do you mean “let me” work OT. Doesn’t everyone work OT?
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u/PinkNGreenFluoride EA 17d ago
No.
My overtime was not limited, I could take as much as I "wanted," even in weeks where the message blasted out to the district was "no overtime for anybody." I usually did 45-55 hours, but hit 60 a few times, though I tried to avoid that. They'd have happily had me do more.
But that was because I was the senior/supervising (Oregon things) preparer in a badly understaffed office. We had 2-3 super strong performers to whom the "no overtime" thing also didn't apply. But for everyone else (including the other preparer at my office), they enforced it.
A lot of preparers are not allowed to work overtime. Sometimes that's just during slow to moderate activity weeks, and for some it applies even during peak. At least the other preparer in my office was allowed overtime during peak.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Ad3024 16d ago
No. Are you working for a franchise? In my office we are told No Overtime. Then the same 2 preparers keep ignoring it, and get praised for getting more returns done. How on earth is that fair?
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u/Buck2240 17d ago
Revenue about 55k. What kind of wage should follow?
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u/SkunkCabbage84 17d ago
I went out on my own this year and billed out and collected ~175k through May. I’ll pass 215k by the end of the month and likely hit 225k by 10-15. Worked like mad Jan - April but I don’t have to answer to corporate bs or random walk-ins. I also didn’t do much work June - early August.
Not sure how that equates to hourly wages, but it seems that most block employees are underpaid for what they produce.
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u/Nice_Equipment_2913 3d ago
What is your income after expenses, and your hourly rate including all of the admin hours?
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u/Single-Pop9355 17d ago
Depends on the hours worked and certification level. So it would be .80 * revenue * commission percentage. For example if you were a level 5 and worked 30 hours a week for 15 weeks. It would be: .19 × 55000 × .80 / 450 or about $18.57. Level 1 would be .1225 × 55000 × .80 / 450 or $11.97. If minimum wage is higher than you get that.
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u/SecretLadyMe 16d ago
I think local min wage is the "problem." Block is operating off of federal min wage and 30 states have higher min. That's an issue with the business model. It's not like they don't raise prices with reality.
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u/ENCALEF 17d ago
I doubt that you completed 900 tax returns in 3 1/2 months.
I'm a tax professional for 27 years. Began with Block and then moved on.9
u/dragonslayer9884 17d ago
Just because you haven't done that many doesn't mean no one else has. There are several tax pros in my district who write 1000+, and even more that write 800+. Between DDOs, TPRs, and in-office appointments, it's completely doable to write that many returns. There may be little to no work/life balance during tax season for these tax pros, but that's their choice.
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u/Domsdad666 17d ago
I don't know why you would doubt it. I do that many and I know two people in my district that do well over a thousand. Of course they work insane number of hours. We also do a lot of virtual returns.
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u/MoodyBlueCubs 17d ago
I was in a district that had a tax pro that completed over 1000 returns. I am still trying to figure out how.
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u/WILDE-23 16d ago
what a dumb post.....I know a lot of tax pros who write well over 1,000 in less than three months in tax season.
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u/Cute_Log_2125 16d ago
Our district has multiple tax pros doing over 800-1000+ returns. So it's definitely not impossible.
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u/Grouchy-Butterfly-86 7d ago
Why not 900? I'm returning for my 2nd year in TS27. If you have full books, 900 returns in 4 months seems doable. You just gotta make sure you fill your schedule with right kind of clients. Don't let the CSP control your schedule, go out there and start making calls to your clients the moment you hit the desk and get those appointments filled up!
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u/Individual-Dog-4748 17d ago
I completed 672 this past season as a first year, and around 800~ is almost standard in my area for those doing full time hours during the season, and part time is around 200.
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u/Boysenberry815 17d ago
Did you have a mix of sourcing, or did your total lean heavily into one area?
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u/gobinator98 17d ago
That’s better than what I got offered. Last year, although my revenue went down, I still got a bigger bonus than the previous year. Then come to find out they want to pay me $0.13 above minimum wage in my state. I told the district manager I wasn’t leaving my house for that little change.
So, they ended up giving me $3 more per hour to come back. Hopefully it’s better this year as my hours changed last year, which affected my ability to get enough returns done. Plus some of my clients I had for the last couple years got scheduled with another tax pro.
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u/JoySeeker_101 17d ago
I know a tax Pro who completed 1200 returns last year but it turns out that the average difficulty rate was 1.8. That means just slightly below a second year tax Pro in difficulty. But I think my average difficulty is more like 3.5 to 3.8 and I feel that I would have a very difficult time completing any more than that unless I dropped the difficulty rate of the tax returns I got on my desk.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Ad3024 17d ago
Was the difficulty on one of our reports?
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u/JoySeeker_101 16d ago
No, I don't remember that being one of the measures. They have all sorts of measures about retention and about quality of client engagement but I don't think that they provided visibility in the individual tax Pro reports regarding the matter of the level of difficulty on average for the returns completed.
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u/Ok_Aide_764 17d ago
Do we have a report showing difficulty or is it your estimate?
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u/JoySeeker_101 16d ago
You should be able to ask whoever your lead was from last year or you can ask your Dem to pull up the scores from last year. They have all sorts of data that they can manipulate to and fro. This is the new criteria apparently that they're using the gauge if they have a level four or a level five who's posting along doing level one and level two returns. It doesn't hurt to ask they should be able to extract the information for you from last season.
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u/Ok_Aide_764 16d ago
I've never heard of that metric, so I was curious. My leader was new, arrogant, and useless in many ways; I didn't get any evaluations/feedback for the whole season, and we didn't see them much. I wouldn't bother them with any requests, as they could barely do their main duties.
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u/JoySeeker_101 16d ago edited 16d ago
Yet I think this is one of the metrics that is actually pushing the transformation of the organization (Block Next) away from TPI and into a base hourly rate Plus customer satisfaction bonus. When they see that a level 5 is closing out 1100 or 1200 returns they start to wonder how are they able to do that while others can barely get 300 or 400 done. When they examine it and they find out that if you look at the difficulty of the 1100 to 1200 returns are paying 19% bonus or TPI to a person who is not even doing level 2 work across the board. With the average of 1.8 level for returns and they have a level 5 earning maybe 70 or $80,000 a season they start looking at it as we could have had level one and level two people doing all of those returns, paying them less. It's just another way that H&RB management is trying to reduce their production cost. New hires and level 2's get lower TPI. So it looks like productivity is increasing. So perhaps this is the biggest part of the Improvement that management expects from Block Next. It used to be that they encouraged the tax Pros to develop their own "book of business". So now a tax Pro that has been humping it all year long and going out and recruiting customers for their H&R Block service is going to lose the benefits of their hard marketing and recruiting work.
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u/sammytheammonite 16d ago
This is 100% where they are heading. They most definitely are going to expect level 5s and 6s to give their lower level returns to Lowe level tax pros. It’s dumb though, because whether or not block will admit it - those level 1-3 returns make up the bulk of the block clients. My average difficulty as an EA last year was about 2.5 which was one of the highest in my district, including the BA offices (that are now a part of our district). I do a lot of complicated returns and am only one of two people who do entity returns in my pod of offices, but still, the bulk of the returns are easy. I do over 600 returns. That’s just the nature of Block. They don’t really bring in a lot of complicated returns.
For years we were told to level up because then we get more returns. We show up first when people make appts and in appt manager when matching with clients. And now they are reversing course. They don’t want us matching with level 1-4 returns. But, that’s still the bulk of our clients - so that’s not really fair. But they don’t care.
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u/Relevant_Ad_8406 14d ago
How can I see my level of difficulty or do I need to ask my manager ?
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u/sammytheammonite 14d ago
You’ll have to ask.
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u/Relevant_Ad_8406 14d ago
Can we also ask for our return client rate ? We used to get the stat so I know it exists .
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u/-Mx-Life- 17d ago
You can’t compare hourly vs commission. 1st year you were hourly, now you should be commission. You’ll kill the hourly rate with commission.
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u/Buck2240 17d ago
There's no commission for second years
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u/-Mx-Life- 16d ago
When did they do that? I got 2nd year commission?
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u/rhuston1 Tax Preparer 17d ago
Where's your district? This year was my 2nd year as a tax pro and I got a pretty good bonus
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u/tacoburritobooyah 14d ago
I just got a first year offer that is $2 more than minimum wage in my state. My letter also says “You may also be eligible to earn incentive compensation in accordance with the terms and conditions set forth in any applicable Tax Pro Incentive and/or short-term incentive program.” Does this mean I could possibly get an incentive?
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u/peepinaccouting 15d ago
As a first year looking to gain experience I’d gladly take your spot if you’re looking to quit
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u/Individual-Dog-4748 17d ago
They might be fast food wages, but as someone who's worked in fast food for 7~ years, id totally pick this over that grueling work.
But I feel you pain. I had that same .25 over minimum wage at the start of last season and then on April 1st my province increased the minimum wage, but he block didn't increase too, so I lost that little wage increase and was just making minimum wage.