Banks on year-round tax prep outreach and partnerships
Banks asks about consumer outreach beyond tax season and multilingual educational materials. Ortiz describes updating materials, partnering with community-based organizations, and hitting hundreds of events during tax season.
Yeah, I'll ask Carlos to describe a little bit of some of the specific outreach, but if I may just brief point, public service announcement for everyone, our New York City free tax prep, which serves over 100,000 New Yorkers every year, no fees, no fines, no nothing,
except tax help, is available year-round.
But there's a large percentage of folks who don't take advantage of it.
Absolutely.
They use it on private.
Yes.
Yes, and, Counselor, I was going to mention that we are updating our educational materials for businesses as well, and we should be distributing those soon so they can understand their obligations to the law.
Okay.
And then on the educational materials.
We're hoping that they're obviously multilingual.
Obviously, you talked about the public awareness campaigns.
And what partnerships are you going to be forming to develop to ensure that both consumers and tax preparers understand their rights and the obligations of Local Law 168?
Well, traditionally, our outreach model is based on deep ties with local community-based organizations, being able to plug into their regular membership and convenings of community members.
So I think we're going to activate those again.
Typically, throughout the tax season, we hit hundreds of events to help educate consumers, and that even starts before the tax season.
So I think we're going to plug into similar aspects and working with also business associations and the representatives.
I think that's been a trusted model for us in our outreach.
Excellent.