Spring In Manhattan

After twenty some odd trips to New York City, I finally made it during the spring time. Most of our trips have been in the winter, and it turns out that these visits have given us a skewed view of the city, and I'm not talking about the weather. Rather, seeing the crowds in Manhattan, especially Times Square, I was overwhelmed by the wall to wall people this week that isn't there in the winter. Two things appeared particularly noteworthy about the crowds. First of all there were large numbers of school groups, presumably visiting New York for a spring vacation field trip. Secondly, hordes of European tourists, likely taking advantage of the weak dollar. I'm guessing every other guest in my hotel was from Europe.

Also interesting is the weather. It was in the 50s and cloudy on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and today (Tuesday). It was 80 degrees and sunny yesterday afternoon, though it was still cloudy and cool at 11 am. That would never happen in California. I guess yesterday they had what is referred to as a warm front, a term unheard of back home.

Also got to see the Spiderman musical, now in its fifth month of previews, and ready to officially open in about two months. No cast or crew were injured during my performance of the show.

Finally, made my first official visit to the Bronx. We did get lost in the Bronx late at night 7 years ago after inadvertently exiting from the freeway (can you say Bonfire of the Vanities?) and almost crossing a bridge to who knows where, but this was the first visit, on purpose and on the ground. Yankee Stadium was a tremendous disappointment, as the new stadium is sterile and nothing is visible from the outside. But Fordham Road was tremendous with the wide boulevard, vibrant shops, and Carribean residents.

Highlights From the Practising Law Institute Annual Real Estate Tax Forum In New York

• Partnership liquidating distributions are almost never made in accordance with capital accounts as directed by the 704(b) safe harbor, except where for fractions rules partnerships. With today's complicated profit and loss allocations, errors are commonly made, and liquidations in accordance with capital would deviate from the economic deal. The fix is made, rather, in future year allocations.
• Deficit restoration obligations are uncommon, too, due to the potential economic liability
• The Sec. 1223 rule bifurcating the holding period of a partnership interest for each capital contribution can be remedied to the extent a current year contribution is offset by a current year distribution
• Direct ownership of a US corporation owning real estate is acceptable with foreign investors whose primary concern is not having to file personally with the IRS. FIRPTA exception for liquidation of USRPHC which has liquidated all its properties avoids the double tax. However, more sophisticated investors will use a tax haven foreign corporation/US subsidiary structure to also avoid the estate tax.
  

Freedom From The Office Workplace Routine

When my company announced a little over a year ago that they were planning a complete office remodel involving the gutting of the entire space I became rather distressed. After all I remember the horror we went through five years previously when our Century City office where I had been resident for almost 30 years was being closed, and all of us where shipped in little boxes to new quarters in downtown Los Angeles. Furthermore, the company was doing the renovation in stages, so no new temporary space was rented. Rather we would double up in the remaining space as other parts were being renovated, meaning a series of temporary moves before landing in our permanent space.

In my case the beginning of the renovation was particularly bad as I was assigned to what I describe as a broom closet, in the interior of the office such that I could not tell whether it was light or dark outside. Furthermore, even though the magic of scanning had greatly reduced my storage requirements from the move five years previous, there still wasn't enough room in the broom closet for all my materials, let along any room for me. (It's hard to believe that even after the move, these "broom closets" are actually double occupancy offices, apparently on the premise that both occupants would never be there simultaneously.)

In the end, however, as desperate circumstances lead to desperate measures, desperate measures may pave the way to a better world that may not have been imaginable. My response was to minimize the time spent in my new quarters. Working at home on a full time basis was not an option, as in my thinking, a day spent without leaving the house is a wasted day. Working at home an hour here or an hour there is OK, but home is not a place conducive to productive work on a regular basis, and staying home all day drives me crazy.

Fortunately a year before the company had rented hotelling space in the Century City twin towers, in the mistaken belief that the space would be widely utilized. Indeed, while that had not proven to be the case largely due to the cost of parking in the area, I was still expecting a lot of competition for the Century City space during the renovation period. As things turned out, the parking situation ($32 a day to park in the building, $11 in a nearby surface lots) continued to scare away users. But that was no problem for me, since due to a combination of street parking in Beverly Hills, which was closer than everybody imagines, and use of Century City mall parking, I was able to utilize the Century City office for three days a week during the renovation period. It was then that I noticed that nobody cared whether I was working in Century City or Downtown, as for the past several years almost all of my work was arriving by email. Suddenly I discovered that I could take Mrs. Chandavkl to Las Vegas during her spring break while I set up my "office" in the Luxor Hotel. Or take a long weekend to San Francisco or even Toronto, without telling anybody, since I could monitor my work situation from out of town as well as from in town.

Once concerned about getting into the office too late or leaving too early, I now find I can work a little in the morning at home and arrive in the office later, or leave the office early and finish up at home later. I can work in Century City or I can work downtown, depending upon where I want to eat lunch. It's all up to me.

Winning Ugly Is Better Than Not Winning At All

Last night's 78-76 win by UCLA over Michigan State was one of the ugliest wins in UCLA basketball history, and particularly as far as NCAA tournament wins go. Up 23 points with 8 minutes to go, even with my pessimistic penchant I had mentally tallied this one up in the win column. However, over the last 8 minutes, Michigan State whittled down the lead to one point and had an opportunity for a game winning shot. Supposedly after the game the Bruin message boards were reacting as if UCLA had lost the game, and even I had no interest in watching the game over again. Yet, the fact is that an ugly win is infinitely better than any kind of loss (see Rick Pitino and the Cardinal Mascot after Louisville's shocking loss to Morehead State).

In hindsight today's game points out the value of other similar ugly wins by UCLA early this year, where the team built up a large lead and then held on for dear life as an inferior team surged at the end to almost, but not quite catch up to the Bruins. At the time these were viewed as ugly wins, having no redeeming value except for the "W" itself, with the ultimate victory attributable to end of game luck or poor play by the opponent. But seeing how yesterday's game was just one of several similar episodes, those earlier wins were probably valuable in enabling the team to have the fortitude to hang on in the end, rather than collapsing, which was entirely possible. Or looking at it another way, winning ugly could be a positive characteristic showing a team's ability to win, a measurement separate and apart from physical talent.

Red Carpet Shots At A Total Stranger's Wedding

We often go to dinner on Saturday evenings at J.R. Bistro in Chunsan Plaza in Chinatown. But last night something distinctively different was going on. As we drove into the parking lot, there was a huge line of people waiting to get into Ocean Seafood restaurant, the banquet sized restaurant on the second floor. Never had I seen such a long line outside of a banquet hall, as guests arriving at a Chinese wedding banquet typically straggle in over an extended (actually, very extended) period of time. Then, after we parked we saw a large bus roll in and deposit another group of people at the end of the line. That sort of explained things--parking was off site so people were arriving at the restaurant in large groups.

However, it wasn't until after we finished dinner that we realized what really was going on. The people were lining up for red carpet shots in front of a backdrop designed especially for the event. By the time we got out everybody was inside the restaurant, but the screen was still standing outside the restaurant. So we decided to take our own red carpet shots.

Do I Know The Way To San Jose?

For the past 15 or so years, the Taxation Section of the State Bar of California holds an annual educational meeting, either in the Bay Area or San Diego. While the Bay Area venue is typically downtown San Francisco on two of those occasions, the meeting was held in San Jose, once hastily moved without a lot of advance notice. Now if you're going to hold a convention type event in the Bay Area, why would you choose San Jose (no offense intended, but what is there to do in San Jose?) over San Francisco. The choice of San Jose was never explained, but I eventually figured it out. On both occasions there were actual or threatened labor actions against San Francisco hotels by union hotel workers, involving possible boycotts of those hotels. Now between you and me, I doubt if many tax attorneys are passionate in their support of hotel workers against the hotels, or for that matter, if they particularly care about the issues being disputed. So why was the meeting chased off to San Jose? Because the State Bar of California is an appendage of the government of the state of California, and as such cannot afford to make waves with organized labor, which is highly influential in this state.

So I just received my notice of this year's California tax bar meeting, and to my surprise (and chagrin, since whether it's held in San Francisco or San Jose, I stay in San Francisco because Mrs. Chandavkl loves to explore the City when I'm at the meeting), I find this November's meeting is being held in San Jose. Now I didn't know that the San Francisco hotel workers and hotels were fighting again, but I assumed something must be afoot. This was confirmed when I walked by the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco earlier this month and heard a crowd of chanting demonstrators yelling something like "If you go in, you're not our friend." A subsequent Google search confirmed indeed that there is another San Francisco hotel boycott in progress. The hotel workers are angling for a pay increase, somewhat baffling given the state of the economy, particularly in a tourist driven economy like San Francisco's. The rationale of the union's leader is that hotel occupancy is up significantly from the depths of the financial meltdown, so the hotel workers should share in this bonanza. Except that in the same time period, while hotel occupancy in San Francisco is up, room rates have declined so much to more than offset the higher occupancy, meaning that gross hotel revenues are even lower than ever. Indeed, even some members of the labor movement don't understand this one, and the head of the hotel workers union is facing some internal flack over his position.

So do I know the way to San Jose? Yup, 45 miles each way from and to San Francisco, each day of the meeting.

Bureaucratic Idiocy Isn't Limited To The Public Sector

While there is no match for the government when it comes to inefficiency and operational chaos, private industry is not free from this. Once upon a time we had a certificate of deposit at Countrywide Bank. Then Countrywide Bank went down the drain and was acquired by Bank of America. If one drew a bell curve showing the interest rates paid by financial institutions, Bank of America and Countrywide would be at the opposite ends of the spectrum. So naturally, when our former Countrywide, now Bank of America CD matured, we opted to close the account in the seven day grace period. Except that Bank of America told Mrs. Chandavkl they were not authorized to close it. They told her she had to go back to New Hampshire where she opened the account. Of course this didn't make any sense as we had opened the account in Pasadena, not New Hampshire.

So even though I was in San Francisco, it was my turn to get them to pay off. Unlike the purely retail branch Mrs. Chandavkl went to, I went to a banking center on New Montgomery St., where I was directed to the Personal Banking department, with a row of stately desks manned by equally stately personal bankers. I explained the situation to Miss Shi, and she started punching in my information. Nothing came up on her computer. She explained that the Countrywide system would not be integrated with the Bank of America system until 2012, so she had no access to my account and that she couldn't help me. That kind of explained the New Hampshire comment, as the former Countrywide accounts had been relegated somewhere back east for administrative purposes. However, that didn't make me any more understanding. "You mean I can't withdraw my own money from Bank of America? So this is like Hotel California?" "What do you mean?" Miss Shi asked. "Don't you know the song 'Hotel California"? "Yes," she replied. "Well, you can check out any time but you can never leave. So you can deposit money in this bank, but you can't take it out." This embarrased her so she consulted with one of the other personal bankers, who told her to call the customer service center. They directed her how to execute the transaction, but I was probably there nearly an hour before I got everything taken care of.

Of course I'm familiar with issues of post-merger integration and I know that it takes banks a good amount of time to mesh their systems. But it's been three years since Bank of America acquired Countrywide, so they should have integrated by now. Also it's not like an out of state acquistion where you can just walk into your old bank branch that now has a different name. Obviously the sooner we totally disassociate ourselves with Bank of America, the better.