Occasionally there are stories in the press about how multinational companies don’t pay taxes accordingly to where they earn their money.
Lately there has been a row in the UK about that Starbucks despite being very successful officially are losing money in the UK and therefore don’t pay taxes in the UK. The Guardian’s latest entry on that here.
The Guardian article quotes a call for more international co-operations.
I wonder if that will be done as we can’t even agree on simple concepts as:
- Having the same format for a date across the globe: Today is 13/12/2012 in most parts of the world but 12/13/2012 in the United States.
- Using comma or period as decimal mark. I have said that 1,731 times in the UK and 1.731 times when I lived in Denmark.
- Agreeing about if a house number comes before or after the street name:
and many many more fundamental things about presenting data.
Liliendahl on Data Quality 
That will be like loosing cultural originality which makes living an wonderful experience. What’s the point in living like 3 of spades or 4 of clubs… all disciplined and controlled by a single rule?
Thirtankar, when thinking about it I think you are so right. Also a super standardized world will have less space for data quality geeks. And oh, tax authorities not working together for someone living in several countries sounds good to me.