IRS Promotes its Social Media Resources

Originally Published on forbes.com on January 8th,2012

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One of the first things to come out of the IRS this year is this little item touting its social meda material. It is short enough to reproduce in full, with a couple of comments thrown in.

Get Ready for the Tax Filing Season with IRS Social Media 

IRS YouTube Video: Connect With the IRS

 FS-2012-3, January 2012 

The Internal Revenue Service uses social media tools and platforms to share the latest information on tax changes, initiatives, products and services. These social media platforms include the IRS2Go phone application, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and iTunes. A listing is available on IRS.gov. 

IRS2Go 

The IRS plans to offer even more features for its IRS2Go phone app for the 2012 filing season. The app is available for the iPhone and Android, and it’s free. Stay tuned for future updates. 

YouTube 

The IRS has short and informative YouTube videos on tax related topics in English, Spanish and American Sign Language (ASL). The channels have received nearly 2.2 million views. The main English channel is the fourth most-viewed federal government YouTube channel. 

IRS Videos – http://www.youtube.com/irsvideos

[The videos are short and to the point. Here is one about using irs.gov.]

[There are issues with some of them, though. Here is one about a web resource to help teachers teach about taxes.  It sounded very interesting, but when I tried to follow the instructions, it said the page did not exist.   Maybe it's just me.]

Material is also available in ASL.  Here is a video on the 2012 due date with voice, subtitles and ASL.

There was a link for multi-lingual material, but I could not get that to work, so I won’t include it to frustrate you.

For you twitterers we have:

Twitter

IRS tweets include various tax-related announcements, news fortax professionals and hiring initiatives:

@IRSnews – http://twitter.com/irsnews

IRS news and helpful information for the public, the press and practitioners

@IRStaxpros -http://twitter.com/irstaxpros

IRS news and guidance for tax professionals

@IRSenEspanol – http://twitter.com/irsenespanol

While you are busy adding twitter things to follow, you could also throw in this one if you want to be sure to be one of the first to see my postshttps://twitter.com/#!/@peterreillycpa.