Saturday, February 23, 2013

Tax forms en Español

Search of the day:

I am working on a Spanish-language display about personal finance. I made a list of books to include and then looked around to see if we had any relevant pamphlets to add to the display. We often get public service pamphlets from the city and various nonprofits so I thought we might have something on safe online banking, managing debt, consumer rights, etc. I didn't find much, but I got really taken up by the idea of having multiple media types on the display. Then it occured to me that, since it is tax season, I could include some tax forms. My library only gets paper forms in English, but I figured I could get permission to print out some Spanish copies from the IRS website if I pulled a minor guilt trip about serving all our patrons equally. I thought I'd do just a few 1040s and 1040 EZs, nothing fancy.

However, even after spending a good 45 minutes on irs.gov, I couldn't find any major tax form in Spanish. The only Spanish-language instruction document I could find was Publication 17. It seems really improbable to me that the IRS doesn't produce 1040s in Spanish, but it also seems improbable that they do but those documents are so well-hidden that 45 minutes of searching didn't unearth them.

Does anyone have any insight into this? If the IRS doesn't produce forms in Spanish, does anyone know why not?

3 comments:

  1. I can't imagine that they don't produce them in Spanish! Is there a Spanish version of the IRS website (where all the text on the site is in Spanish)? Could the forms only be accessible if you change the website language?

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    Replies
    1. It's really odd. There is a separate Spanish version of the IRS website and it does list forms, but the 1040s listed there are all in English. Write to the IRS and complain, everyone!

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  2. I checked with the IRS online help, and they confirmed that all they have is the Puerto Rico form (which doesn't help, as PR's tax regime is different).

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