We take a quick look back at the Atari 2600 game, Tax Avoiders, for US Tax Day

For many people in the US, today is not a fun day. It's the annual event that's becoming known more and more as Tax Day. It's the day when people must fill their annual taxes for the previous year with the US government, specifically with the Internal Revenue Service. Normally it's held on April 15, but for 2023 that day fell on a weekend, and then Monday, April 17 was an official holiday, Emancipation Day, in the District of Columbia.

A few weeks ago, an art collective called MSCHF announced plans to release a game on Steam called Tax Heaven 3000. The game was supposed to be one of those anime-themed visual novels where you go on a date with a girl, who is supposed to also help you with your taxes.

Kotaku reports that while the game was supposed to be released on Steam on April 4, that didn't happen and the game's Steam page has now been removed. It might have something to do with the fact that the game has this girl ask the player for his social security number. While the developers insist that the game doesn't connect to the internet so your SSN is "safe", perhaps just adding that option was enough to scare Valve off.

However, there is an old game that you can play online that has you try to avoid filing to the IRS. It's called Tax Avoiders, and it was first released in 1982 for the Atari 2600.

According to Moby Games, this title was the first and only game developed by Dunhill Electronics. It's also the first and only game from the publisher with the most generic name ever: American Videogame. Needless to say, this game wasn't exactly a huge seller, although it possibly sold more copies than Atari's massive movie-based failure, E.T., which came out the same year.

One of the more interesting things about Tax Avoiders is that the box art claims that the idea for the game came from a man named Darrell Wagner, who is labeled as a "Licensed Tax Consultant and former IRS Revenue Agent." Furthermore, the box claims Todd Clark Holm developed the game and was at the time an "Independent Investment Advisor, registered with the S.E.C." There's no real proof that either of these men truly had these credentials, but we will admit it gives the game some credibility.

You would think that with a former IRS agent and an investment adviser behind the creation of Tax Avoiders, it would be more of a sim game with lots of numbers and paperwork. It's not. Instead, the game is a side scroller where you are controlling "John Q". You have to collect as much money on screen as you can with several levels you can move onto via an elevator. The money is represented by green dollar signs. However, you also have to avoid encountering "red tape" which the Atari 2600 showed as something similar to a red snake.

Every so often, your character enters another screen. In this screen, you want to take the money you have collected and then try to invest it, which the game sets up as collecting another icon. There's also a second human character that changes color. If it's black, it's an IRS agent and he will take 50 percent of your money if it catches you. If the character is pink or green, it will invest your money if it catches you. You get that for free if the character is green (investment advisor), but you get charged $1,000 if the person is pink (CPA).

While the gameplay is nothing to write home about, we will give Tax Avoiders props for coming up with a concept that has the player character try to find loopholes in the US tax system. You can actually play the game in your web browser now by going to the Internet Archive site. But make sure you file your real taxes first.