r/tax: rules, karma requirements and posting culture

Who posts here

The subreddit calls itself a home for tax geeks and taxpayers, and both show up. A student asking how to fill in a first withholding form sits next to a preparer asking how state and federal depreciation interact on a rental sale. Simple questions get real answers, often with form numbers. Vague ones get asked for the state, the filing status and the amounts.

• Ordinary taxpayers with a notice, a late refund, a move between states or an inheritance.
• Self-employed people and small business owners working out deductions, entities and estimated payments.
• CPAs, enrolled agents and other preparers, who write most of the long answers.
• People outside the US with questions about their own country's forms.
• Founders and vendors researching tax software, who are tolerated only when they sell nothing.

Karma and account requirements

What it takes to get a post through in r/tax.

What you can post

What happens to a new post

Where the most recent posts ended up. Sample size: 300.

• Stayed up66%
• Removed by Reddit's filters21%
• Held by AutoModerator5%
• Removed by moderators6%
• Deleted by the author2%

Reddit counts a removal by the subreddit's own AutoModerator rules as a moderator removal, so that share is not all human. Held by AutoModerator means the post is waiting in the mod queue.

What happened when we posted here

We have posted here ourselves. This is how our own posts and comments fared.

Stayed up

96%

Removed by Reddit's filters

0%

Removed by moderators

4%

Period

October 2025 to August 2026

The rules, in the mods' words

1. 1

   Be nice

   You can have disagreements and strong opinions, but please remember the human.

2. 2

   Do not solicit business, either publicly or by DM

3. 3

   Do not post or otherwise link to content intended to benefit any business

4. 4

   Do not move conversations to DMs

   Trying to take discussions "offline" into emails or DMs is NOT allowed here. That includes offering or sending private messages, chats, or anything similar. This rule is in place to protect users from the vast amounts of scams that go on in DMs, especially in financial-focused subreddits. If you received an unsolicited message please report it to the Reddit admins via the report button and to the r/tax moderators via modmail with an imgur link of the message.

These are the rules as archived in January 2025. Rules change. Check the sidebar before you post.

The culture

r/tax is a question and answer room. About 87% of posts are text and the rest are links. A typical post is around 120 words describing one person's situation: a divorce and an unfiled return, a refund stuck in processing, an amended state return that suddenly shows a balance due. About 34 posts arrive a day and a typical one gets six comments.

Those comments are the point. At a median of 35 words they are long for Reddit, and many read like a short memo: the rule, the form, the order to do things in. The people writing them mostly earn a living preparing returns, and the sidebar says so. It also says plainly that nobody here is giving you tax advice or forming a client relationship.

There is not much of a fight in this subreddit. The friction is with outsiders: preparers fishing for clients, software founders, people posting political complaints about tax policy. The rules are short and aimed squarely at those. The sidebar also asks people not to post about IRS processing delays and to keep jokes to a minimum.

What lands

• A specific situation with the facts laid out: filing status, state, income type, amounts, what has been filed so far.
• A technical question from a preparer that names the form and the software.
• A small useful discovery, like learning that each spouse can have a separate flexible spending account.
• A planning question that shows your own reasoning and asks what you missed.
• Honest uncertainty. Posters who say what they do not understand get patient replies.

What gets removed or ignored

• Posts built around a named website, tool or product, including a question asking whether anyone had used a particular tax site.
• Job listings and anything that solicits business.
• Political rants about tax policy and angry posts about a tax agency.
• News links, some of them duplicates. Our data does not show the reason for each.
• Posts from new accounts, which the sidebar says will likely be caught as spam until a moderator releases them.

The unwritten rules

• Give the country and state first. A lot of posts turn out not to be about US tax, and the first reply asks.
• Do not offer to help by DM, even kindly. It is banned to protect people from scams.
• Do not name your firm, your software or your blog. Regulars answer without credentials or links, and only about 4% of comments carry a link.
• Expect to be told to hire someone when the stakes are high. The sidebar ends on that advice.
• Go easy on the jokes. The sidebar says they should be kept to a minimum.

Self-promotion

There is no allowance to work within. The rules ban soliciting business in public or by DM, and ban posting or linking content intended to benefit any business. The sidebar adds that promoting a product or service you are involved in as an owner, employee or agent is strictly prohibited, that links to tax professionals and blogs are not allowed, and that even recommendations of specific professionals are out. In practice posts that name a commercial site are removed, and the one founder post that stayed up in our sample asked preparers what they want from software and said it had nothing to sell. The only way a professional benefits here is by answering questions well under a plain username.

How people write here

Typical post length

120 words

Typical title length

10 words

Titles phrased as a question

39%

Typical comment length

35 words

Comments that include a link

4%

Posts that carry a flair

28%

The regulars

The accounts that showed up most in our sample. Worth reading before you post: they set the tone, and they are usually the first to reply.

Top keywords

The words and phrases that show up far more often here than in other communities, from recent posts in r/tax.

• tax 149 posts
• taxes 75 posts
• irs 59 posts
• income 63 posts
• filed 39 posts
• filing 35 posts
• form 44 posts
• federal 28 posts
• file 44 posts
• amend 14 posts
• owed 18 posts
• owe 20 posts
• return 31 posts
• income tax 15 posts
• paid 41 posts
• tax return 14 posts
• refund 22 posts
• pay 46 posts
• amount 34 posts
• cpa 21 posts
• received 27 posts
• penalties 12 posts
• state 30 posts
• returns 20 posts
• tax returns 11 posts
• turbotax 8 posts
• interest 23 posts
• taxable 11 posts
• federal tax 8 posts
• correct 20 posts
• capital gains 8 posts
• penalty 12 posts
• taxpayer 8 posts
• withheld 8 posts
• gains 12 posts
• preparer 7 posts
• property 17 posts
• withholding 9 posts
• w-2 7 posts
• married 13 posts

Recurring topics: tax, payment, refund, state, irs, business, extension, withholding, taxes, form.

Growth

1. 20121.9k
2. 20133.7k
3. 20145.9k
4. 20158.3k
5. 201611k
6. 201721k
7. 201842k
8. 201972k
9. 2020104k
10. 2021145k
11. 2023213k
12. 2024287k
13. 2025419k
14. 2026477k

Related subreddits

• r/TaxQuestions
• r/cantax
• r/IndiaTax
• r/personalfinance
• r/taxPH

Common questions