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|| First published: | Last edited: || 📚🕒 Reading Time: 2 minutes
|| First published: | Last edited: || 📚🕒 Reading Time: 2 minutes ADHD tax is a casual term used to describe the additional costs, both tangible and intangible, that ADHD individuals often face due to their neurodivergence, especially struggles due to executive dysfunction.
These costs can be financial, such as late fees or increased insurance premiums due to forgetfulness or impulsivity, or they can be emotional, such as the stress and frustration of managing daily tasks that neurotypical individuals may find straightforward.
The “tax” is not an actual tax, but rather a metaphorical one, representing the extra burdens that come with ADHD.
Examples of ADHD tax
- Losing things or forgetting you already have that thing and buying multiples by accident. The cost of replacements and extra purchases adds up.
- Not being able to cook due to executive dysfunction, and relying on takeout. Also, fresh produce rotting is now in the fridge because, again, not being able to cook means it will not get used, so even more money is lost.
- Missing deadlines and not meeting societal expectations in school or work, leading to job loss or academic penalties.
- Investing money upfront in something that seems exciting and also might be able to give you some support or joy, only to later realise that it’s not working for you. This is especially hard if it’s not your fault, but you cannot participate because the course / place / activity was not accommodating to your needs or not made with you in mind.
- Time blindness, executive dysfunction or overwhelm leading to being late, spending extra money and surge pricing for next day last minute deliveries / printing. Missing the bus and having to use a car service.
- Undiagnosed and unsupported co-occurring other neurodivergent traits leading to extra medical expenses. Chasing down the dead ends of misdiagnosis adds to the expense pile.
- Needing to spend money on extra support not provided by school or workplace – sensory aids, tools, etc. And since time is money, spending extra hours or even days on figuring out the new software / building / system for yourself and creating accomodations that should have been provided by your employer is also free labour you are doing due to your neurodivergence, and therefore an extra expense.
- Not directly money, but also an extra expense nevertheless: needing to spend more time regulating and decompressing after exhausting or overwhelming school or work events, which then in turn cannot be used on other things.
- Impulsive and unplanned purchases made during exhausting or overstimulated periods, in the hopes of boosting your dopamine a bit.
- Unsupported ADHD is also linked to much higher rates of substance abuse (alcohol or drugs as maladaptive self-medication) and addictive behaviours (gambling, for example). All of these negatively affect all aspects of life, finances included.
