In Al Capone's town and elsewhere, the Taxman cometh

This time of the year is a very taxing one here in Chirish-land and throughout the US as across the country, the good folk of America race to meet the April 15 IRS deadline and file their income tax returns.

IRS stands for Inland Revenue Service but other popular alternatives are Infernal Revenue Service and Income Removal Service. No doubt Chicago’s most notorious resident Al Capone would have had his own version after finally being caught, not for his illegal gangland operations, but for failing to file his taxes.

Along with learning how to navigate health insurance options, understanding tax requirements has to be one of the biggest challenges to living this side of the Atlantic. There is one basic rule we quickly learned – if in doubt, pay it out. Unpaid taxes are a thing to be feared here, attracting penalties like Al Capone’s enemies attracted bullets.

In the UK, we file our taxes and wait for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs Service to send us a polite letter if it needs more money. Here, even when you file your tax return on time in April, if you haven’t actually paid enough taxes between January to December, you are already liable for penalties. So not only do you have to calculate how many noughts you owe but also how many more you owe for being naughty. And perish the thought if you still underestimate because that’s when the penalties really start.

It doesn’t help that you generally have to file a federal return and a state return. And if you are living in certain big cities such as New York, they are also due their own significant chunk of your earnings. Working out who gets what is enough to make anyone ready to be submit themselves to the Intelligence Retrieval Service.

The good news is that for most people, the fear of falling short leads them to pay too much tax throughout the financial year so they end up actually receiving a refund. Last year this averaged around $2,800, which sounds great except, as some have pointed out, it also means they essentially were giving Uncle Sam an interest-free loan.  A loan, which for the 2012 tax year totalled just under $310 billion, according to statistics from the IRS (this time standing for Interest Rates are for Suckers?).

Refunds are helped by deductibles, an encyclopedia of tax allowances and deductions which could easily be described as Imaginative Reporting of Spending. Had a rough year at the bingo halls? Never mind, the tax man allows you to deduct your total losses up to any amount you won. If your doctor signs off on it for specific medical reasons, wigs, weight loss expenses, clarinet lessons and even swimming pools can be used to stop you going bust. And talking of bust, there is even the famous case of a professional exotic dancer who managed to persuade the tax courts that her breast implants were a work expense and therefore deductible.

There are also other ways of getting something back. Several restaurant chains have special “Tax Day” offers to help you fill up while you fill out your forms. From McDonalds where you can grab a second Big Mac for just a cent, to the Hard Rock Cafe, where if you grab the mike between noon and 2pm, you can “sing for your supper” (I know, I told you people eat early in Chicago).

And it’s not just food handouts. Over at Office Depot, they appreciate the necessary cathartic process required after tax filing so they’re giving customers the chance to shred up to 5 lbs of paper for free. I however prefer the therapeutic service being offered in our local wine bar which is picking up the tax amount on all food and drink tomorrow. That’s my kind of IRS – Imbibing Rioja Slowly.

The Chirish guide to being Irish

As the great day approaches, the many suggestions on offer as to how to celebrate the wearing of the green never cease to amaze me, mainly because many of them are about as Irish as Barack O’Bama. So here are a few guidelines to show your green credentials are more emerald than limey.

Don’t eat corned beef and cabbage

A favourite beef of mine (sorry). This most un-Irish of dishes came to my attention in our first year living in the Big Apple and I assumed it was simply because corned beef was readily available as a stalwart in Jewish cuisine. However the Big Onion, in all its Chirish-ness, is no different which got me wondering.

A few google searches later and I discover the most traditionally Irish thing about corned beef was the beef itself. Back in the 17^th to 19^th centuries, it was a big industry in Ireland, either traded via the Atlantic or used by the British armed forces. But, as you can probably guess, Irish people themselves couldn’t afford it - until they emigrated to America, that is. So it really is an O'Bama-style traditional Irish dish.

The true culinary companion to cabbage (and not to found in Jewish cuisine)  has to be ham, either boiled or baked. But then we're back to the old American bacon versus Irish bacon dilemma. Except we've solved that one by getting Male Mini-Me a DIY curing kit for Christmas so now there are two males bringing home the bacon in this household.

And then there’s lamb. You really can’t get more Irish than Irish stew but trying to track down some reasonably-priced lamb is like trying to catch a haggis on a Scottish mountain (you know, the creatures with one set of legs shorter than the other so it can run quickly around the hillsides).

If that seems like a tall story to you, I’m seriously beginning to wonder if all the sheep here only comprise of legs as a) that’s all I seem to be able to buy in the shops and b) it would account for why it costs an arm and a leg to buy them.

Don’t imagine it’s always been a big parade day in the Emerald Isle

The first St Patrick’s Day parade in Dublin was only held in 1931. Given the man himself died on March 17, 461, it has taken a while for the whole green-shamrock-beads-in-the-shops thing to catch on.

In my wee corner of Ireland (where the great man is actually thought to be buried), it took us even longer to jump on the parade bandwagon, with our first parade in Belfast only taking place In 1998. Support at that time was, shall we say, mixed, despite it trying to be very much a cross-community event - which in Norn Iron usually just means one or other of the two communities is cross.

Today, I am proud to say, the Belfast “carnival parade” is very much cross-community, with this year’s line-up including a "Manchester-born winner of the UK X-Factor", the Tir na N’Og Irish dancers and the South Asian Dance Academy

Don’t wear green but blue instead

Only kidding on that one although apparently St Patrick was originally associated with the colour blue.  Even today, St Patrick’s blue is a sky blue used by the Order of St Patrick in the UK or a dark blue in Ireland as seen in the Irish Presidential Standard

Don’t expect to be served a drink in a pub on St Patrick’s Day

Again, only kidding although in Ireland, it was true for over 30 years last century. That was because the very nice man who made St Patrick’s Day a national holiday in 1903 also instigated a law closing pubs for the day in 1927 for fear of excessive alcohol consumption on a religious holiday. The law was repealed in 1961 but during that time, the only place to drink legally in Dublin was the Royal Dublin Society Dog show. Surprisingly attendance shot up. No doubt they all needed the hair of the dog come March 18.

Don’t go on the go unless you want to be fined up to $1,000

And here I’m not joking! We all know that what goes in has to come out sometime and there is a fair amount of imbibing of many dubious liquids on March 17. In order to avoid dubious liquids of another sort, Chicago’s City Council last April doubled the maximum fines for both drinking and tinkling in public to $1,000.

Given this will be the first St Patrick's Day under the new ruling, it brings a whole new meaning to the traditional pot of gold!