The Council of the District of Columbia has unanimously passed a law to nullify the tax-haven blacklist that it drew up in the summer.

The now-defunct blacklist targeted nearly 40 jurisdictions around the world, including Antigua, the Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Dominica and Grenada. As with the European Union's own unilateral blacklist, the choice of jurisdictions appears to have been rather capricious, leaving out some of the world’s largest 'tax havens' including Switzerland and Ireland.

This is not the end of the 'tax haven' criteria in title 47 of the DC Code, however; these survive. According to this code a 'tax haven' is a jurisdiction that:

• for a particular tax year in question has hardly any tax on the relevant income and has laws or practices that prevent effective exchange of information for tax purposes with other governments regarding taxpayers who benefit from the tax regime;
• lacks transparency whereby the details of legislative, legal, or administrative provisions are not open to public scrutiny or are not consistently applied among similarly situated taxpayers;
• facilitates the establishment of foreign-owned entities without the need for a local substantive presence;
• somehow excludes the jurisdiction's resident taxpayers from taking advantage of the tax regime's benefits or prohibits enterprises that benefit from the regime from operating in the jurisdiction's domestic market; or
• is favourable for tax avoidance.

The threat that the initiative posed to correspondent banking relationships between DC and the Caribbean prompted the DC business community and the islands themselves to unite in a chorus of uproar. A deputation of diplomats from CARICOM, notably from Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados and the Bahamas, brought its influence to bear and triumphed over the opposition after a barnstorming campaign. The Caribbean states are, however, worried that other US states might concoct blacklists of this sort, as nothing in the US constitution stops them from doing so.