Oh hell yeah! IRS for the win! Turbo Tax is finally making a board game about doing your taxes.
Setup
The game is pretty simple and can be playable for 2-8 players. Each player starts out by picking an occupation at random from the occupational class card pile. There's a variety of occupations that you might get. Small business owner, debt riddled college drop out, call center employee, non profit owner, or even multi-billionaire sexual assailant with pedophilic tendencies, to name a few.
After you discover your class every player rolls a D-12 to determine the number of dependencies they have. You need to be sure to record your class type and dependencies onto your W-2's in order to play the game accurately. You can lie and cheat on your W-2's but if you get caught you will be thrown in jail.
How Jail Works
The majority of this game is played on a board on your living room table, but the jail is a pre-determined room somewhere in the house in which you're playing. It could be a closet, a bathroom, a guest bedroom, or the backyard. If you go to jail all the other players in the game may make one insulting comment towards you per round and request menial tasks from you throughout gameplay. Tasks such as "grab me a drink," "do the dishes," or "change all of the lightbulbs immediately!" You will perform these tasks for little to no pay. Players who are in jail have an increased chance of getting syphilis.
Syphilis
If you are the Multi-Billionaire Sexual Assailant with Pedophilic Tendencies, you cannot be sent to jail but you do start the game with an incurable case of syphilis. Syphilis does not help you win unless you are rich. It's not exactly clear how syphilis helps the rich players, but it is very clear that the less fortunate players with larger families will have to pay for treatment multiple times throughout gameplay.
Starting Moves
You start by having the richest person on the board take a denomination of their choosing from all the other players. It's best to be quiet, respectful, and friendly towards the richest person because they are also given the symbolic "talking gun." The talking gun is a cardboard cutout which resembles a Smith and Wesson 442. The player who possesses the talking gun is at liberty to override and interrupt whatever conversation is happening around the table. Other players may acquire the talking gun by pulling a loophole card. Loopholes allow players to negotiate asset claims that may or may not be in their possession. You might be able to state your car as a "company car," or owning a gun that you took out of someone else's gun safe. Everyone has access to loopholes but some players have the ability to draw more loopholes than others.
Gameplay
The goal of the game is to save the most money on your taxes while avoiding syphilis at all costs. Players who have a net worth of $1,000,000,000 or more, want as many people on the lower end of the bracket to get syphilis quick and without hesitation. Players who can't seem to make ends meet want to overthrow the more fortunate players while also avoiding ailments.
I know this seems confusing and the game reportedly hasn't been completed yet, but I think we should see it hitting the shelves sometime this spring! Maybe they'll ask for an extension and we'll see it sometime in the fall. Who knows!
