Accounting software company Open Ledger has launched a new product in time for tax day.
Meet Pokétax. This is a game that will help you make tax filing extremely fun. Instead of tax forms, users are targeted at tax trainers (gym leaders) who represent various parts of the tax form, such as income, deductions, and credits. Each leader asks questions that will help players complete their tax forms.
“Once you finish PokétaxRun, you will be led to the IRS direct file site and officially submitted,” Open Ledger co-founder Pryce Adade-Yebesi told TechCrunch. The game is an adaptation of an open source Pokemon game called Pokémon Awnowned, and he promised that this was no April Fool’s Day joke.
“This is real. It works. Tax scams aren’t funny. And it’s not the IRS,” he said.
Adade-Yebesi and Ashtyn Bell launched their open ledger earlier this year, bringing together a $3 million round led by Kindred Ventures and Black Ventures. Adade-Yebesi said his team was the first to create the product, which is open source. “Can we actually pull this off?” he and his team pondered. The answer was clearly yes.
The game has an AI assistant to help organize user responses, allowing players to win badges – discover new deductions when taking on a tax trainer.
Taxes are an unloved part of being a good citizen, and few founders consider turning the process into a game. In particular, in 2023 there was the dating style game Tax Heaven 3000. There, the user went on a date with an avatar named Iris. However, that was only for the 2022 tax return year.
Adade-Yebesi hopes that by adding fun to such a financial process, they will “be more attractive and soul-sucking.”
Taxes are on April 15th.
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