Our U.S. competitors have many benefits that we do not, such as tax-exempt bonds for capital projects and the ability to raise taxes from local property owners, which gives these U.S. ports a substantial advantage over us.

As a first step, by June 2016, a mandatory Common Corporate Tax Base (CCTB) in the Union, possible with a temporary exemption for small- and medium-sized enterprises which are not MNCs and companies with no cross-border activity, in order to have only one set of rules for companies operating in several Member States to calculate their taxable profits.

137. Considers that increased transparency regarding the activities of multinational companies is essential for ensuring that tax administrations are able to efficiently combat BEPS; reiterates accordingly its position that MNCs in all sectors should disclose clearly and comprehensibly in their financial statements, broken down by Member State and by third country in which they have an establishment, a range of aggregate information, including their profit or loss before tax, taxes on profit or loss, number of employees, assets held, basic information about tax rulings (country-by-country reporting); underlines the importance of making this information available to the public, possibly in the form of a central EU register; stresses furth ...[+++]ermore that SMEs and mid-caps which are not MNCs should be exempt from such an obligation; calls on the Council to adopt, by the end of 2015, Parliament’s position as voted in the Shareholder Rights Directive in July 2015; stresses that transparency requirements should be designed and implemented in such a way that they do not result in EU firms being put at a competitive disadvantage;

135. Considers that increased transparency regarding the activities of multinational companies is essential for ensuring that tax administrations are able to efficiently combat BEPS; reiterates accordingly its position that MNCs in all sectors should disclose clearly and comprehensibly in their financial statements, broken down by Member State and by third country in which they have an establishment, a range of aggregate information, including their profit or loss before tax, taxes on profit or loss, number of employees, assets held, basic information about tax rulings (country-by-country reporting); underlines the importance of making this information available to the public, possibly in the form of a central EU register; stresses furth ...[+++]ermore that SMEs which are not MNCs should be exempt from such an obligation; calls on the Council to adopt, by the end of 2015, Parliament’s position as voted in the Shareholder Rights Directive in July 2015; stresses that transparency requirements should be designed and implemented in such a way that they do not result in EU firms being put at a competitive disadvantage;

Naturally, not all tax matters can be harmonised; there are certain areas, such as income tax, that will never be completely harmonised, but there are others – and here I am essentially thinking about the basis for calculating tax on company profits – which should be set up as something that can be harmonised and exempted from the unanimity rule, which would give Parliament the leading role in areas as important as those we are dealing with.