ALBANY - New York's Division of Human Rights has filed complaints against tax preparers Jackson Hewitt and Liberty Tax Service, saying they disproportionately target minorities and military families for high-interest refund anticipation loans, and sued H&R Block to get information on its practices.

“We are particularly outraged by these products at a time where the economy is so troubled,” Commissioner Kumiki Gibson said Wednesday. “We are looking into whether it's discriminatory. We know it is abusive.”

The agency last year began investigating the nation's three largest tax preparers for their refund anticipation loans, which she said can carry accumulated interest rates of up to 700 percent. “They are outrageously high. They go to the pockets of these tax preparer companies, generally from people who are not wealthy,” Gibson said.

John Hewitt, chief executive of JTH Tax Inc., doing business as Liberty, said the claim against his company is “without merit.” He said Liberty locates offices near H&R Block offices. “Sometimes they're in poor areas, sometimes they're in high-income areas. It has nothing to do with what they're saying.”

The agency filed complaints in January against Jackson Hewitt and Liberty after reviewing their subpoenaed information, Gibson said. It included refund anticipation and payday loans from the previous three years, individual offices' loan activity, advertising outlets used and marketing plans.

State Supreme Court Justice Betty Owen Stinson ordered H&R Block on March 6 to supply similar information. While H&R Block identified itself as an agent of HSBC Bank for offering refund anticipation loans, Stinson ruled the state probe into Block's marketing practices was not pre-empted by federal law.

“Given statistics tending to show that the New York customers most likely to make use of these loans are in the military or located in minority neighborhoods and less likely to have a bank account,” the judge wrote, “it is clearly within the purview of the Division to ascertain whether that customer base is due to marketing practices by H&R Block that specifically target these protected groups with loan products which would be rejected out of hand by experienced borrowers.”

After additional investigation, the next step would be a hearing before an administrative law judge, probably within a few months, where requested relief could include cease-and-desist orders. The national sum of fees alone on high-interest quick cash loans was estimated at $960 million in 2005. The companies continue to sell loans at issue, division spokesman Thomas Shanahan said.

Gibson said especially troubling is the fact that taxpayers can get their refunds directly from the government within days and free tax preparation services are available.

The companies charge fees and interest rates that are taken off the top, even when actual refunds are lower than expected, she said.

Liberty had 2,135 stores nationwide last year, with 102 in New York, and was the third-largest tax preparation company in the U.S.

Hewitt said his company had a lower percentage of refund anticipation loans than the others, and typically the loans simply carry a one-time fee of $80 or $90 on a refund of $2,500 or $3,000. That money is recovered 10 or 11 days later when the IRS sends the refund to the bank's account.

“It's a flat fee but the way the banking rules are they make you claim it as interest,” Hewitt said. “They don't ever have to pay more than that. ... There are a lot of examples where if you want something quickly you have to pay something extra for it.”

Jackson Hewitt Tax Service, with 6,051 stores nationwide and about 360 in New York, is the second largest. H&R Block, the nation's largest tax preparer with about 12,500 retail offices in the U.S., reported $4 billion in revenues for 2007.

Calls to the Block and Jackson Hewitt were not immediately returned Wednesday.