Today, the hot tax story is that almost 15,000 American crooks – I mean taxpayers – have disclosed their offshore accounts to the IRS and will now pay back billions of tax dollars. IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman was absolutely ecstatic in reporting the good news.

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But betting that this agreement between the U.S. and the Swiss ends bank secrecy as we know it is a sucker’s bet.

I listen to Senator Carl Levin because he knows the score. In a statement today he said that the agreement now getting so much hype “shows the Swiss Government trying to preserve as much bank secrecy as it can for the future, while pushing to conceal the names of tens of thousands of suspected U.S. tax cheats. It is disappointing that the U.S. government went along.”

Disappointing indeed.

View TaxAnalysts' Chris Bergin's opinion in its entirety on TAX.com.