WIth US tax deadlines fast approaching, there’s now a way to pay your taxes without wanting to gouge your eyes out. Tax Heaven 3000 is an anime-style dating sim experience that helps you file your tax returns, while simultaneously searching for that special someone, because taxes make the heart grow fonder!

Headed by MSCHF, the art collective behind viral drops such as Lil Nas X’s satan shoes and those big red Astroboy boots at New York Fashion Week, the free software introduces users to Iris (aka IRS, Internal Revenue Service), a dating sim who’s described as “a cheerful and assertive girl”. Users are encouraged to get to know Iris by going on dates (read: file your taxes) using cutesy loading animations that capitalise on our parasocial desire for intimacy – and uWu horniness. Suitable for singles without dependents, if you get the jist, Tax Heaven 3000 plays like a standard dating sim, only with the small addition of sharing your social security number. 

Described by MSCHF as “the nightcore of tax software”, Tax Heaven might initially seem like a memey drop built to grab online attention, which it certainly does, but there’s more thoughtful motives at play, too. “Corporate tax filing services like TurboTax 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. They feed us their poison so that we buy their medicine!” reads a statement. In-game, this is translated to users through the narrative of corporate lobbying baddie Turbo, the game’s villain, an “unsavoury SaaS bro, quick to anger and oddly fixated on Iris”. Tax Heaven 3000, in contrast, has a game-to-real-life interface that is intentionally transparent and easy to use for even the smoothest of brains, so there’s less chance of losing out on (real) money. As the tagline goes: “search for deductions while searching for love.”

US federal income taxes are due on April 18, and if you haven’t already filed, you can access Tax Heaven 3000 here. A physical version is also being sold, which includes a boxed version of the game, as well as an Iris body pillow. There are even out-links to X-rated fan fic with titles such as Filing Head Over Heels and For All of Time and Taxes, which have already garnered thousands of reads, not to mention a Deviant Art account dedicated to Iris. Find out what the hype’s about below.