IRS Under Fire For Blowing $350 Million Developing MMORPG Tax Video Game Called ‘Tales Of Revenue’

WASHINGTON—Drawing swift backlash from critics concerned about the agency’s spending, the Internal Revenue Service came under fire Friday for blowing $350 million to develop a massively multiplayer tax-filing video game entitled Tales Of Revenue. “When I first downloaded it from IRS.gov, I thought it’d just be a short thing, but I’m almost 170 hours into this and I still haven’t submitted my taxes—also something called an Auditor Goblin keeps killing me,” said Cleveland resident Anthony Lopez, one of millions of users who questioned whether there were better ways for the IRS to use its time and money besides developing an immersive fantasy kingdom ruled over by IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel. “Clearly, the IRS people got really into the mythos. There are 50 Realms of Revenues you can travel to, and they each have distinct tax structures that affect your buffs. That’s all fine, as far as it goes. But all I want to do is indicate that I’m head of household, and apparently I need to grind out another few levels collecting 1040-EZs in the Fiduciary Forests to do that. Also, it keeps asking me if I want to download an expansion pack called The Capital Gains Chronicles. So I guess they already developed and released that?” Lopez added that while he appreciated the game’s feature allowing him to marry and have children, he was deeply confused by the fact that this seemed to affect his filing status in real life.