Tax Preferences

Tax Preferences

INT. STUDY – LATE AFTERNOON

The light is beginning to slant. Tea cups replaced by glasses of water. 
Joanna scrolls slowly on her phone, expression cooling.

                         JOANNA
           It’s March twenty-first.

A beat. She doesn’t look up.

                         JOANNA (CONT’D)
           The CRA still hasn’t posted my T4s.

She sets the phone down, almost gently.

                         JOANNA (CONT’D)
           I wait for them. Every year.  
           I like to watch them appear in the portal.

                         GYLES
           You watch them?

                         JOANNA
                   (firmly)  
           I do. And when they do, I click once, and the numbers 
           glide straight into the TurboTax form.  
           It’s... seamless.  
           It’s like being understood.

                         GYLES
           I don’t use that.

Joanna looks up. Slowly.

                         JOANNA
           You don’t use auto-fill?

                         GYLES
           No. I enter it all manually. Line by line.

                         JOANNA
                   (blinking)  
           On purpose?

                         GYLES
           Of course. I like the rhythm of it. The form.  
           I even print the slips.

                         JOANNA
           You print the digital slips?

                         GYLES
           Every year.

A pause.

                         JOANNA
           I just don’t see the point of doing the work 
           the system is already doing for you.

                         GYLES
           That’s the point. It’s mine.

                         JOANNA
                   (dryly)  
           It’s tax data, Gyles. Not a novel.

They sit quietly.

                         GYLES
           I trust my eyes more than theirs.

                         JOANNA
           I trust whoever gave me back eight hundred dollars last year.

FADE OUT.