Anime dating sim that also does your taxes coming for tax season

U.S. federal income taxes are due on April 18, and if you haven’t already filed, you have an exciting new option: Tax Heaven 3000, an anime-style visual novel/dating sim that will also help you file your tax return.

Tax Heaven 3000 stars Iris, a comely young woman who is definitely into you and into helping you prepare a United States federal income tax return. It’s for single filers without dependents, if you get what I’m saying. ;) Tax Heaven 3000 appears to play like a standard dating sim, but you have to put your Social Security Number in, sharply increasing the player’s level of trust in the lovely Iris.

Developed by MSCHF — who also released Chair Simulator on Steam in 2021 — the creators describe what Tax Heaven 3000 is really all about in its product description:

Most wealthy countries make tax filing free, if the burden of preparation is even passed along to individuals at all. But, corporate tax filing services are (by dint of extensive lobbying) predatory, parasitic bottlenecks that deliberately complicate the tax filing process in order to make it unnavigable by ordinary people.

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.

Videogames are, at the end of the day, pieces of software–ontologically akin to Microsoft Word. Tax Heaven 3000 simply makes the fiction the point. For some reason the game-to-real-life interface has tended to remain the purview of corporate metaverse fictions. Tax Heaven 3000 is a dongle that adapts from a visual novel to the IRS.

Worried about giving someone other than the IRS, TurboTax, and/or various credit card companies your SSN? Don’t fret, MSCHF is legit. You know them. They made Lil Nas X’s Satan Shoes. They made the Eat the Rich popsicles (edible versions of Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, etc.). They made the Big Fruit Loop. They even made those viral big red Astroboy boots.

Pricing for Tax Heaven 3000 hasn’t been announced, but given the message behind it (and Chair Simulator being free) expect it to cost nothing. Tax Heaven 3000 will be released on March 31 for Mac and Windows PC, giving U.S. taxpayers just a couple weeks to get to know Iris.

Update (March 23): Tax Heaven 3000 has been delisted from Steam. MSCHF co-founder Daniel Greenberg tells Polygon he doesn’t know why the game was delisted. In an email to Polygon, Greenberg said, “[Tax Heaven 3000] went through steams standard verification process, and was ready go live April 4th, but out of nowhere if was de-verified and removed from the platform without explanation yesterday. That’s all we know.”

Polygon has reached out to Valve for comment on Tax Heaven 3000’s delisting and will update when the company responds.

Tax Heaven 3000 will alternatively be available through Itch.io and as a direct download from the game/tax software’s website. A physical version is also being sold, which includes a boxed version of the game, with instruction manual, installation disc, case, and Iris character body pillow.

Image: MSCHF