At the Department of Revenue, we know some of our customers don’t speak English as their first language. Here are 10 things to know about our language access services.

10. The Home Rule Charter, Philadelphia’s “constitution”, states that every City department must provide services and information to people who don’t speak English.

9. Like other departments, we’ve adopted a Language Access Plan. It says that we provide multi-language services because it’s “essential to the success of our mission to collect a variety of tax and non-tax revenue”.

8. Our language access services–at the Municipal Services Building, our satellite offices, or Call Center–can help with over 240 languages.

7. Last year the Department of Revenue received 1,135 separate requests for telephone interpretation services. We helped folks in 18 different languages.

6. Spanish, Mandarin and Russian are our most asked-for languages. Together, they represent 87% of all telephone interpretation requests.

5. Over the past 12 months, we’ve added up 200 hours of interpretation services over the telephone.

4. Revenue translates many of its public documents. This includes water and tax flyers, some applications, forms, and official notices.

3. We’re sharing multi-language information digitally too. We do this through blogs on our website, social media posts, and videos.

2. A request for interpreter services can be made orally, in writing, or by pointing to a language card. When a bilingual staff is not available, we’ll use an over-the-telephone interpreter.

1. Language access services are FREE to taxpayers and water customers.