The Department of Revenue serves a diverse group of tax and water customers. This makes language accessibility an important part of our mission to collect taxes and water charges, while providing relief to Philly’s most vulnerable residents.

We understand that some of our customers don’t speak English as their first language. That’s why we’ve made language accessibility one of our top priorities. The goal is to make our services and information accessible to everyone, regardless of their language. We offer interpretation and translation services in many languages.

Here are 12 things to know about our language access services:

1. Language access services are provided free of charge to all taxpayers and water customers.
2. Our representatives who speak your language are available to assist you. They can also help you with interpreter services over the phone or in person.
3. You can request language accommodation in writing if you prefer. Just email us at revenue@phila.gov!
4. We received 1,935 telephone interpretation requests between 2022 and 2023.
5. Our most requested languages are Spanish, Mandarin, and Vietnamese. Together, they represent 95% of all requests for telephone interpretation. Our least requested languages are Uzbek, Tigrinya, Japanese, and Italian.
6. We offer interpretation services in over 240 languages, including creole regional tongues, through our interpretation service provider.
7. You can get these services at the Municipal Services Building or at our Northeast satellite office. We always recommend calling our Call Center for interpretation services.
8. We publish multi-lingual blogs, social media posts, and online videos.
9. We translate most of our tax and water forms, applications, flyers, and official notices into Spanish, Mandarin, Russian, French, Simplified Chinese, Arabic, and Haitian Creole.
10. When we’re invited to in-person events requiring language accommodation, we plan ahead to have bilingual staff on hand to assist residents in their preferred languages. If we do not have the capability to accommodate your language in-house, we’ll arrange to bring an external interpreter who speaks your language to assist you.
11. We’ve fully translated the Philadelphia Tax Center and its functionalities into Spanish. The Philadelphia Tax Center is the City’s official tax filing and payment website. Just use the “Ver en Español” blue bar at the top of the site to switch the language and access the Tax Center in Spanish.
12. Water customers with MyPhillyWaterBill accounts can now receive emails and SMS notifications in Spanish! The notifications include new bill alerts and payment confirmations. MyPhillyWaterBill is the City’s official water bill payment website. Once logged in, choose “Notifications” under “Profile” and pick “Preferred language” to interact with us in Spanish. Language preferences can be changed at any time.

You can communicate with us in Spanish!

You can choose Spanish as your preferred language when communicating with us online. To do this, you must be logged into your Philadelphia Tax Center profile. This way, you will receive notices and other communications from us in Spanish. If you would like to communicate with us in Spanish, but do not wish to create a username and password, please call (215) 686-6600. A representative will look up your account and switch your language preference to Spanish.

Please note that while the Tax Center is fully accessible in Spanish, not all written communications have been translated. We are working on translating hundreds of letters in our portfolio. Please call (215) 686-6600 if you need help or have questions about language accommodation.