Bloomsday

(Garfield Center)

Happy Bloomsday!

The day is named after Leopold Bloom, the central character in Ulysses. The novel follows the life and thoughts of Leopold Bloom and a host of other characters – real and fictional – from 8am on 16 June 1904 through to the early hours of the following morning.

Celebrations often include dressing up like characters from the book and in clothes that would have been the style of the era. One of the hallmark fancy dress items of Bloomsday is the straw boater hat. Celebrations come in many different forms like readings, performances and visiting the places and establishments that are referenced in the book.

The Bloomsday Breakfast is another common celebration, which involves eating the same breakfast as Leopold Bloom consumes on the morning of 16 June. This includes liver and kidneys alongside the typical ingredients of an Irish fried breakfast.

James Joyce (1882-1941) has been hailed as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, and Ulysses is his greatest novel. It was required reading in high school English and college literature; in both cases many weeks were spent deconstructing its meaning.

Ulysses was heavy going for your humble blogger, who had difficulty appreciating stream-of-consciousness writing. However, one benefit of slogging through Ulysses was an early realization that I wasn't cut out to be a liberal arts major. I wasn't interested in chasing down obscure allusions and mapping out similarities to the Odyssey.

It was much later in life that I read Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Both were written in a more conventional narrative style, and the short stories and novel are, IMHO, more readable. Now that I have the time, maybe I'll give Ulysses--and Leopold Bloom--another shot.

St. Patrick's Day: It Really Was Better Back Then

Front and Sacramento, St. Patrick's Day 2006.

St. Patrick's Day used to be an unofficial holiday in San Francisco.

The City would close Front Street to traffic, and Harrington's Bar and Grill was the center of the milling about.

Last fall Harrington's shut down rather than gut it out to the re-opening.

Harrington’s Bar and Grill will permanently close after an 85-year run in San Francisco. Michael Harrington, its third-generation owner, shared the news in a short message posted on the business' website...

“The decision was very difficult to make but with everything we have to do regarding reopening in an unsafe environment for each of us,” Harrington wrote. “To wait out this pandemic was financially unreasonable.”

Some of what we have lost is permanent.

St. Patrick's Day, 2021

Brisket is a tough, inexpensive cut, and slow-cooking at a low temperature--my oven works best at 225 °F (107.2 °C)--tenderizes adequately if I can roast it for at least eight hours.

Corned beef, which has always been made in our kitchen on St. Patrick's Day through the traditional boiling method, is simply seasoned brisket. Slow-roasting should work (at least that's what food bloggers claim).

And so it was that I began prepping the corned beef at 5:30 a.m. The spices from the seasoning packet were rubbed into the fatty half, and each slab was wrapped in aluminum foil.

(We need leftovers for sandwiches tomorrow, I bought two 3½-pound pieces.)

Into the oven at 6 a.m., and the rest of the day is free. That's another advantage of slow-roasting; you don't have to rush back to the kitchen because over-cooking the dish won't ruin it.

I stopped by Starbucks at 6:15 for an extra jolt of caffeine, which will be desperately needed to tackle a couple of tax returns today.

Don't forget to wear something green!

A Subdued St. Patrick's Day

Having spent many a March 17th toasting the patron saint of Ireland, I prepared a boiled dinner of corned beef and cabbage. A simple meal for a reflective time.

With gatherings of more than 50 people banned throughout the Bay Area and many parts of the country, the American version of St. Patrick's Day stands revealed as little more than an excuse for getting drunk, a "largely secular holiday of revelry and celebration of things Irish."

Front and Sacramento, St. Patrick's Day 2006

We're a long ways from seeing the end--or even the middle--of the coronavirus story, but already it's had a permanent impact on how we see the world.

Danny Boy is often sung during St. Patrick's Day, but its mournful mood clashes with ear-splitting exuberance.

Now the tone fits.

But when ye come, and all the flowers are dying,
If I am dead, as dead I well may be,
Ye'll come and find the place where I am lying,
And kneel and say an Ave there for me.

Expectations Upended

Not Mr. Ohara
(visualdepartures.com)

A friend waxed enthusiastic about a landscaper by the name of O'Hara. An Irish gardener--why not?

After repeated calls I finally made contact with the man's wife, who had a Japanese accent. Oh, oh, Ohara.

In her email my friend used both the apostrophe and the capital H in the spelling of O'Hara. My expectations were easily set, and I did find their upending amusing.

Related: in modern English apostrophes inhabit a wacky world.

Blowback

Margrethe Vestager, EU Competition Commissioner 

The field of international tax planning was specialized, complex, cloistered, and quiet---until the European Commission ruled on Tuesday that Apple has to pay €13 billion ($14.5 billion) in back taxes to Ireland. Tax-the-corporations crusaders "hooted with delight" and seemingly didn't care about the methods used to arrive at the result. The overwhelming majority who adhere to the rule of law--whether the law cuts for or against their preferences--saw the danger.

The Economist [bold added]:

"The commission concluded that Irish rulings in 1991 and 2007 artificially lowered the tax Apple was due to pay, and that although the firm did not break any law, this arrangement was in breach of EU state-aid rules preventing member states from offering preferential treatment to particular firms."

Normally laws trump "rules" in the hierarchy of legal authority, but not, apparently, when the laws of the sovereign state of Ireland are measured against the rules of the European Commission.

The Wall Street Journal:

For a quarter-century, Apple relied on agreements from Irish authorities that all of a sudden are adjudged to have provided it with billions of dollars in what the EU has now ruled to be illegal state aid.

There's no question that Apple and other multinational corporations take advantage of inconsistencies between tax jurisdictions ("tax arbitrage"). To achieve significant tax reduction under the law, however, multinationals must have employees and other attributes of a "real business" in low-tax countries, hence explaining why Dublin is a boomtown.

Apple CEO Tim Cook: "Total political crap"

Quite apart from the merits of its case, the European Commission ruling can be viewed as an attempt to reassert its authority (and finances) after Brexit. However, the blowback may have been stronger than they had anticipated.

Apple's EU tax ruling has sparked talk of an 'Ir-exit'. Other European countries are watching and weighing the benefits of staying in the union.

Apple, as well as other multinationals like McDonald's and Amazon, will contest the judgment for years. Meanwhile, they have also begun moving some operations out of the Eurozone to reduce exposure to EC rulings. We are seeing either the resuscitation of the European experiment or the beginning of its end. If I had to bet, it would be on the latter.

Multinational Tax: No Change Any Time Soon

Lisa De Simone

Stanford accounting professor Lisa De Simone says that multinational corporations shift income to low-tax jurisdictions at twice the rate of previous estimates:[bold added]

In our European sample, instead of $54 billion being moved, we find that it’s more like $99 billion..... a change in the tax code could have a bigger effect on the tax base than previously thought. Say, for example, a country raises its tax rate, hoping to generate more revenue; you could get enough outward income shifting that tax revenue actually goes down. In a global economy, the corporate tax base is a very leaky vessel!

To repeat, after raising the tax rate countries sometimes find that total collections go down as multinationals shift income.

One of the principal mechanisms is "transfer pricing," that is, a high-tax French subsidiary "sells" product to an Irish sister company at a low price, thereby making France less profitable and Ireland more so. Income and expenses may also be shifted through other structures such as loans, leases, and service fees.

With the multiple jurisdictions and entities involved, international corporate taxation is much more complicated than U.S. individual income taxes. Trying to increase tax collections from multinationals would involve changing the law country by country in dozens of jurisdictions, which will be difficult and extremely time consuming.

Do not expect change any time soon.

The Hills Are Greener Over There

It's common knowledge that U.S. companies either move their headquarters or set up significant operations in Ireland to cut their U.S. taxes.

Dublin's infrastructure has now developed to the point that startups, most of which don't have a tax bill, are setting up shop for non-tax reasons.

Dublin looks a lot like home: a young and educated workforce, global business culture, population thirsting for new technology and Twitter and Facebook signs dotting the horizon. Labor and real estate are cheaper than in other European destination cities and, more than the familiar language or palatable food, the city's tech tenant roster makes Dublin feel comfortable to Silicon Valley transplants.

Like in any relationship, if one party keeps raising its demands and takes the other for granted, the other will first distance itself, then leave, and may never return. The founders of future Facebooks and Apples are watching how these enormously successful companies are treated in their home state and are arranging their affairs accordingly.

As places like Dublin roll out the welcome mat to startups, the ambitious entrepreneur is lured by a future in which she won't have to worry about high taxes, regulatory complexity, or moving her company. Erin Go Bragh!

The Month for Corned Beef

Prolific Oven corned beef lunch - $7.95

March is the month for corned beef. Restaurants offer generous portions in celebration of St. Patrick's Day, and supermarkets display shelves upon shelves of packaged slabs. When I'm in a hurry I throw all the ingredients--corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, and carrots--in a pot to make a simple New England boiled dinner.

It's well worth taking the extra time, however, to roast the corned beef. Roasting seals in the juices, and the method yields not only a delicious dinner but also the main ingredient for tender sandwiches.

One third of the roasted brisket still remains from St. Patrick's Day. It will be gone by next week Monday, when the month for corned beef will come to a satisfying close.

This Fine Day

I had never heard the songbook of Finian's Rainbow until our high school performed it. We had wonderful singers and talented comedic actors in the class ahead of us, and playing in the concert orchestra I was lucky to have a front row seat.

The tunes have stayed with me---much more than other Sixties musicals that garnered more awards---but, now that I am closer in age to the old Irish father than his daughter, the lyrics take on poignancy.

How are things in Glocca Morra?
Is that little brook still leaping there?
Does it still run down to Donny cove
Through Killybegs, Kilkerry and Kildare?

How are things in Glocca Morra?
Is that willow tree still weeping there?
Does that laddie with the twinkling eye
Come whistling by? And does he walk away
Sad and dreamy there, not to see me there?

Happy Saint Patrick's Day, especially to everyone who is far from home.

[Note: the 1968 film with Fred Astaire and Petula Clark, directed by Francis Ford Coppola(!), is on Amazon Streaming Video and is free to Amazon Prime customers.]