The IRS is finding new ways to reach taxpayers beyond the typical means of communication—including through fortune cookies.
“Now when people go into a Chinese restaurant, and they open up their fortune cookie, they not only can get a fortune, but they get some tax advice as well,” Derek Ganter, director of stakeholder liaison at the Internal Revenue Service, said Thursday.
This is one example of the efforts of the Tax Outreach, Partnership and Education team that is a part of the IRS’s communications and liaison office. The team was created to build partnerships with emerging national organizations and find nontraditional ways for outreach.
The group has relationships with for-profit entities like
Fortune cookie companies are doing it for free, and the messages in the cookies include things like reminders about deadlines, Ganter added.
“We cannot use a monolithic approach,” Ganter said. “We live in a very diverse country and we have to go where people are and we have to communicate with them in a manner and method that best suits them.”
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