For US workers, the first few months of a new year are grim. Not only are you faced with the darkest, bleakest months, you’re forced to tangle with taxes. It’s a process so steeped in frustration and mystery that there’s an entire industry based around helping you file them. But for weebs and people who really hate filing their taxes and the tax-related hellscape it’s created, there’s an alternative: Tax Heaven 3000, a visual novel dating game that prepares your 2022 federal income tax return.
Yeah, you read that right.
Let a Waifu File Your Taxes in This Anime Dating Sim
Produced by MSCHF, an American art collective based in Brooklyn, Tax Heaven 3000 is a strike back against expensive tax-filing services and seeks to offer its players a free and straightforward method of filling out federal income tax returns.
It does so by having you courting Iris, a charming woman who’s dream is to meet that special someone… and file their tax return. Over the course of five “dates”, you’ll fill out and even download the forms, and Iris is kind enough to keep a tally of how much your refund will be.
The game is entirely free and was made to combat tax-filing services like TurboTax. On the Tax Heaven 3000 site, Iris states the following:
“Most wealthy countries make tax filing free, if the burden of preparation is even passed along to individuals at all. TurboTax actively seeks to backdoor the regulatory structure that could otherwise seek to rein it in. And it works! The villainous corporation that controls the government from the shadows is a sadly mundane reality. It’s the most boring industry imaginable.
TurboTax, per its own internal documents, is built on “Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt” that ordinary people have about their taxes. Against this, we pit free software instead built on a parasocial desire for intimacy and benign horniness! If TurboTax is Dark UI, TH3K is Pink UI, the nightcore of tax software.”
Whoops, it looks like Iris became a little self-aware in that last paragraph. But she’s definitely a two-dimensional waifu I’d love to go on a date with and get radicalized by.
Related: Tchia Metacritic Score Revealed
TurboTax even makes an appearance as an actual character in a game as an unsavory SaaS bro, quick to anger and oddly fixated on Iris.
Unfortunately, Tax Heaven 3000 has already had its Steam page removed, where it would have been available to download on March 31. Tax Heaven 3000 has since moved to itchi.o, which you can find here, or on its own independent site here.
Its release date is currently unknown. In the interim, why not checkout their site and the Wattpad fanfiction they’ve written of Iris? Or check out this article: Store Bug Allows Players to Use any Weapon Blueprint in COD MW2 Ranked Play.
