Tax Avoiders

The object of Tax Avoiders is to help John Q become a millionaire within one game year by collecting income and avoiding taxes. There are two alternating game phases. In one, the player moves around the screen, collecting dollar bills and avoiding red tape; this represents maximizing income for the quarter. At the end of the quarter, the other phase has the player move around to manage his investments while another sprite oscillates between an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agent, a certified public accountant (CPA), and an investment advisor.

If the player is caught by the IRS agent, he is audited, and always loses the audit, which takes 50% of his income. If he encounters the CPA, he is charged a fee but gains new tax-sheltered investment options. If he encounters an investment advisor, he can maximize his tax-sheltered investment returns.

On the packaging, Tax Avoiders is credited to Darrell Wagner a "Licensed Tax Consultant and former IRS Revenue Agent" and Todd Clark Holm "an independent investment advisor, registered with the S.E.C.". It was developed by Dunhill Electronics and designed by John Simonds. It was published by American Videogame.

Dunhill Electronics is also credited as a developer on Porky's, an Atari 2600 game published by Fox Video Games, for which John Simonds was also credited. According to Randall Hyde, one of Porky's programmers, Dunhill Electronics was a tax write-off scheme conceived of by Simonds. Dunhill produced many cheap games with a lot of shared code. Most games were never intended for release but, according to Hyde, games would occasionally need to be shipped to keep up appearances.

Computer Entertainer called it "cleverly conceived but primitively implemented." They considered the graphics "barely acceptable" and the controls "less than smooth", ultimately deciding it was mostly only valuable for collectors. Ian Bogost wrote that Tax Avoiders "mounts an interesting and relatively complex procedural rhetoric about tax avoidance strategies." He thought the process of tax avoidance being mapped to physical movement was not ideal but still somewhat persuasive, "the player must run around to collect income, literally avoiding red tape." Brett Weiss called the gameplay "redundant" and lacking in difficulty, but "more fun than doing actual taxes."