{"id":215,"date":"2010-03-09T23:06:25","date_gmt":"2010-03-09T23:06:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/?p=215"},"modified":"2010-03-09T23:06:25","modified_gmt":"2010-03-09T23:06:25","slug":"tesco-press-tasting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/uncategorized\/tesco-press-tasting","title":{"rendered":"Tesco press tasting and filing my US tax return at the embassy"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Tesco press tasting was held today, on a fruit day (according the biodynamic calendar). The wines tasted pretty good, and I found plenty that will end up in my Sunday Express<\/em> column. It’s important for wine drinkers in the UK that major retailers such as Tesco do a good job, because they dominate the off-trade. But of today’s line-up of 130 wines out of a much larger range, many were also present at the last press tasting. The result is that we press only get to try a subsection of what punters are actually buying. It would be interesting to try the 100-best-selling wines from the Tesco range.<\/p>\n

I also had to file my US tax return today. The advance for my next book, Natural Wine<\/em>, was paid from the USA (University of California Press). They witheld 30% for US tax, which I don’t have to pay as a non-resident alien paying tax in the UK. To get this back, I had to file a US tax return, with form W7 attached which gets me an ITIN (individual tax identification number). Reading up about this on the IRS website, I was worried that it could involve jumping through quite a few official hoops and be pretty time-consuming.<\/p>\n

So I trekked over to the IRS office at the US embassy expecting to stand in line for ages. It actually turned out to be very straightforward. The IRS office was quiet, I got seen straight away, they authenticated the copy of my passport photo page (which meant I didn’t have to part with my passport, or pay to get a notarized copy), they helped out with filling in the return, and I filed it directly with them. Result.<\/p>\n

The US embassy website says that you aren’t allowed to bring in any electrical items, such as mobile phones or PDAs. So I left my phone and laptop at home. It felt strange to spend a day without both of these: I felt a bit naked, and yet also a little liberated. Such devices increase productivity, but they also enslave us. I suppose it’s all about balance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Tesco press tasting was held today, on a fruit day (according the biodynamic calendar). The wines tasted pretty good, and I found plenty that will end up in my…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":216,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions\/216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}