Statement of Bill Cobb, President & CEO of H&R Block, Following Today's IRS/Industry Summit in Washington, DC on Identity Theft Tax Refund Fraud

KANSAS CITY, MO--(Marketwired - June 11, 2015) - (NYSE: HRB) - "I am pleased to announce that H&R Block has signed the Memorandum of Understanding, along with other members of the industry. The MOU documents the agreements of the broad-based working group on detecting and mitigating identity theft tax refund fraud. I commend Commissioner Koskinen for his continued leadership of this unprecedented effort to build a public/private partnership to fight this evolving threat.

Our goal for the working group was to implement change to better protect taxpayers. The MOU is a good first step, but it is just a small first step. We must seize the momentum and move beyond a set of predominantly voluntary guidelines.

We must get ahead of the fraudsters. To do that, we need to deal with the most pressing challenge -- authentication -- by collectively developing industry-wide standards to authenticate filers before submission of the tax returns to the IRS and the States in time for tax season 2016. Looking further out, we need a comprehensive framework that governs the end-to-end process, builds layers of defense against fraud attacks, and is adaptive.

There is still much work to do, and not a lot of time to get it done. H&R Block looks forward to advancing the efforts of the working group, and I ask Commissioner Koskinen to continue his strong leadership by developing a clear mandated way forward to solve the problems that remain. The taxpayers are counting on all of us."

About H&R Block
H&R Block, Inc. (NYSE: HRB) is the world's largest consumer tax services provider. More than 680 million tax returns have been prepared worldwide by and through H&R Block since 1955. In fiscal 2015, H&R Block had annual revenues of nearly $3.1 billion with 24.2 million tax returns prepared worldwide. Tax return preparation services are provided by professional tax preparers in approximately 12,000 company-owned and franchise retail tax offices worldwide, and through H&R Block tax software products. H&R Block Bank provides affordable banking products and services. For more information, visit the H&R Block Newsroom at http://newsroom.hrblock.com/.

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Gene King
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