IRS: “Historic Improvements” for Tax Returns
Tax season began on January 27th and the Internal Revenue Service has announced “expanded and improved tools to help taxpayers as a result of the agency’s historic modernization efforts.”From ‘minute one’ of his second U.S. presidency, Donald Trump shut down social media and the White House website in Spanish. In doing so, he turned his back on 14.5% of the population and the nation’s largest minority, with 43.5 million people, far more than the 36.3 million African Americans; 12.9 million Asians and 2.4 million Amerindians, according to the 2020 U.S. Census.
However, all Hispanics are welcome to contribute to the economy through taxes. Trump has not cut Spanish language assistance but will continue with the Federal Administration’s “significant efforts” in this regard. This is probably the only initiative he will respect from his predecessors. “One hundred percent of the information, tutorials and documents of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are in Spanish,” Octavio O. Saenz, bilingual Public Relations and Media Relations Manager, tells Sol de Medianoche. “We have been working for years on improving the service provided to citizens in all languages, mainly in Spanish, regardless of who is in charge in the Federal Administration,” says Saenz. “We make a very significant effort to ensure that language access is not an obstacle. In addition, there are many bilingual volunteers and advisors.” The efforts highlighted by the IRS Public Relations Manager are very commendable. It is just a pity that the same level of interest is not shown in other official government webpages. The IRS announced that it will have “expanded and improved tools to help taxpayers as a result of the agency’s historic modernization efforts.” More than 140 million individual tax returns for the 2024 tax year are expected to be filed by the April 15 deadline. More than half will be filed with the help of a trusted professional, “to avoid potential scams and fraud,” says Octavio O. Saenz. The IRS has reported that “since the last tax season, improvements include greater access to tax account information through text and voice virtual assistants, expanded features in the IRS Individual Online Account, more access to dozens of tax forms via cell phones and tablets, and expanded alerts for scams and frauds that threaten taxpayers.” Scams and frauds to which the Latino population and other communities with a mother tongue other than English are “more vulnerable,” he adds. For Danny Werfel, IRS Commissioner, “this has been a historic period of improvement for the IRS and people will see additional tools and features to help them file their taxes this season.” |