The Internal Revenue Service slashed the number of languages it supported from 20 to seven in response to an executive order from President Trump, according to a new report.
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The Treasury Department recommended the IRS continue to provide non-English compliance materials, such as tax forms, instructions, letters, etc., to not impair tax collection. However, the Treasury did recommend the IRS place a banner on all of its non-English forms, instructions, web pages and products stating that the English language versions of all documents are the authoritative versions of all federal information. It also recommended the IRS eliminate all of its non-English social media channels, narrow the scope of the language services it offered, and remove or revise all references to the IRS’s previous multilingual expansion priorities.
In response to the executive order, the IRS has updated each of its non-English language web pages to include the banner and plans to continue to update documents during their normal revision cycles with a projected completion date of next January. The IRS has also shut down all of its non-English social media accounts.
The IRS has now reduced the number of supported languages available for multilingual services from 20 languages to seven: Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Russian, Korean, Vietnamese and Haitian Creole. However, not all services are available in each language, according to the report, so the number may even be fewer.
In contrast, former IRS commissioners, including the commissioner appointed by Trump during his first term, Chuck Rettig, have placed special emphasis on
The report noted that the IRS will continue to offer multilingual services, such as written translation services in the seven languages. Taxpayers will also have access to the IRS website and over-the-phone interpreter services in the seven languages.
“Overall, many existing services will not change since the IRS offered limited products and services outside of the seven languages before Executive Order 14224,” said the report. “While taxpayers who relied on the languages that are no longer supported will be affected, the IRS’s approach appears to strike a balance between complying with the executive order and providing services for the most used languages.”
The report said the IRS’s decision to focus its services on the seven languages appears to reflect an effort to align its resources with taxpayer demand. “Overall, these changes may have limited overall impact on [limited English proficiency] taxpayers because many of the languages that are no longer supported were used by relatively small numbers of taxpayers.”
For example, the report noted that correspondence is only provided in English and Spanish and limited tax products are translated into other languages. In FY 2025, over 99% of the non-English IRS.gov websites and 93% of the over-the-phone interpreter calls used the seven supported languages.
“However, the impact on the taxpayers who did rely on the discontinued languages should not be dismissed,” TIGTA acknowledged. “While taxpayers have lost access to some written documents, the IRS has retained translation services for languages outside of the top seven if needed for mission critical or compliance-related issues. Considering EO 14224 requirements, the IRS’s approach appears to strike a balance between complying with the executive order, maintaining meaningful access for most LEP taxpayers, and focusing resources on the languages most frequently used.”
TIGTA made no recommendations in the report, and IRS officials did not provide any comments in response to a draft of the report.
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