Ah, tax season

2008 inches closer and closer, meaning that once again wage earners will have to file their income taxes.  And since IRS publications can be hard to understand for native English speakers, just imagine how difficult it can be for all of those ESL citizens!  The IRS has tried to make that a little easier for 2008: recently they issued several new glossaries of tax terminology for taxpayers in the Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Russian communities.

From the news release:

“The Virtual Translation Office of the IRS helped create these glossaries of tax terminology to help taxpayers and the professionals who assist them. The publications were developed in cooperation with professional translators and editors to establish uniformity in language usage in IRS tax products and to function as reference materials for these products.

Although the publications are not legal documents, the IRS hopes that these glossaries will be useful to members of the U.S. Chinese, Korean, Russian and Vietnamese communities in understanding IRS documents and clarifying tax-related issues.”

A Spanish glossary has been available since 2003.

I was unable to find similar information on the Alabama Department of Revenue’s web site.