Businesses which are both transparent and give out what they should to the society deserve a reward. Acting correctly has to translate in a tangible competitive advantage - a each TAXPARENT company should be allowed to use a distinctive mark to enhance its public image.

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE FOR THOSE DO THE VOLUNTARY DISCLOSURE. Voluntarily TAXPARENT companies, that is companies which disclose their corporate structure and global effective corporate tax rate, deserve a reward. Apparently, from the behavioural point of view, a company which does a voluntary corporate and tax rate disclosure should be treated more favourably than a company which does not do so or does so only by constraint. Moreover, voluntary disclosers should be rewarded since they save money of authorities as these do not have to surveil them so intensively.

EU TAXPARENT MARK. Hence, any company, including companies within the group concerned, could be allowed to use EU TAXPARENT mark if it voluntarily disclosed to the general public its entire corporate structure and its global effective corporate tax rate were above 11,25%. The good will and proper conduct of voluntarily transparent entities merit a compensation which would make them more attractive in the eyes of the general public.

NATIONAL TAXPARENT MARK. The EU TAXPARENT mark is conceived as framework mark only. It would provide for free space so that individual Member States could design additional national TAXPARENT sign within this mark and define its own conditions under which it could be used. For example, they could foresee that the national TAXPARENT sign could be used when the company provided a country-by- country report and its global effective corporate tax rate (GECTR) were equal or above the national statutory corporate tax rate. For instance, a company registered in the Czech Republic forming a part of a multinational group could add Czech national TAXPARENT sign for 2013 if it provided to Czech authorities a country specific report and its GECTR for 2013 was above the Czech statutory corporate tax rate in 2013 (19%).

OPT-IN POSSIBILITY. Given that the proposed design is not intended to apply to SMEs and purely national corporate structures, the EU as well as the national TAXPARENT mark would not be available to these entities. Yet, if these entities would like to profit from the TAXPARENT solution, they could have the possibility of opting in in order to be able to reap the benefits of the EU or national TAXPARENT mark.