Each business knows who are its owners since it generates money for them. The first choice is therefore simple. Opt for transparency and go all the way. Show that you can play by the rules and succeed at the same time. Everybody will appreciate it.

THE SMALL HAVE TO BE TRANSPARENT, THE BIG ONES CAN HIDE. In number of countries the corporate structure of SMEs and as a result although their global effective corporate tax rate has to be entirely transparent. SMEs have to sustain the entire regulatory and tax burden and cannot escape it. Unlike SMEs larger corporate structures can benefit from corporate anonymity and avoid taxation by shifting profits through complex corporate structures into non-transparent tax havens. Thus, there is an apparent and unreasonable discrimination between the ultimate owners of small and large companies.

REMEDY BEGINS WITH TRANSPARENCY. “The remedy begins with transparency—genuine transparency, in which tax authorities and policymakers have a clear and complete picture of the global tax planning structures of multinational companies and the implications of those structures for generating stateless income.”* If a non-negligeable number of SMEs manage to be transparent and at the same time succeed on the market, there is no reason why larger and usually richer multinational companies should not be treated in the same way. Corporate transparency does not necessarily has to be prescribed, but can be offered as an option to be chosen voluntarily by responsible businesses. Hence, the first choice is to be fully transparent about one’s corporate structure and the global effective corporate tax rate on one's own account.

VOLUNTARY TRANSPARENCY SOLVES THE PROBLEM FOR THE PUBLIC AS WELL AS FOR PUBLIC AUTHORITIES. Without voluntary transparency it is often very difficult for public authorities to find the global corporate structure of multinational companies as well as their global effective corporate tax rate. “Those who seek redress run into baffling bureaucracy and a legal morass. Seeking real names and addresses means dealing with lawyers and accountants who see it as their job to shield their clients from nosy outsiders.”** Voluntary disclosure would thus resolve the problem for public authorities. Disclosure for general public would, in addition, have the advantage that it would get under scrutiny of journalists, civic organisations and citizens so that little surveillance by authorities would be necessary.