By Christopher M. Matthews From Wall Street Journal

European countries seem to have decided that is no longer cool to be a tax haven. In a letter last week to Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the subcommittee’s ranking member, the Irish ambassador to the U.S. bristled at Ireland being labelled a “tax haven” during the committee’s recent hearing on the tax practices of Apple Inc. “[T]he memorandum refers to Ireland as a “tax haven,” Ambassador Michael Collins wrote. “As you will be aware, the OECD has identified for key indicators of a tax haven. None of these criteria applies to Ireland.”

For years, many European countries were more than happy to accept untaxed monies of foreign companies and individuals and let them hide the funds in private bank accounts. But now that the U.S. and others have started cracking down on tax evasion, and calling out countries, and caches of offshore banking records were leaked, the dynamic has changed. The prime minister of Luxembourg, long seen as a tax haven, summed it up in remarks to Parliament in April when he explained why Luxembourg had decided to start sharing bank information with foreign tax authorities after years of resistance.

“Nothing is as it was before,” Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker said. “Not everything has changed, but lots of things have changed. Other changes are necessary, or everything will change.”

As the New York Times reported, Luxembourg isn’t alone. Switzerland, Austria, Ireland, the Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, and other British territories in the Caribbean have all to varying degrees indicated they may consider lifting the veil of bank secrecy. And that issue was the focus of a European Union summit meeting in Brussels last month. For its own part, the U.S. has done little to address incorporation laws in places like Delaware, that allow some states to essentially function as tax havens. That didn’t stop Sens. Levin and McCain from calling out Ireland.

EXCLUSIVE ON RISK & COMPLIANCE JOURNAL:

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