After a three-year investigation that opened up “a deep diplomatic rift between the United States and Switzerland,” the Swiss bank UBS has finally succumbed to the IRS and is going to “hand over 4,450 accounts that contain a staggering $18bn”:

The 4,450 accounts soon to be in the possession of US investigators are expected to reveal the secretive world of international wealth management in which complicated webs of sham trusts and shell companies are created in tax havens to protect the assets of the super-rich. Switzerland shields nearly a third of the world’s $7tn of privately held wealth. Under US law, the IRS must be notified of offshore accounts holding more than $10,000.

For what it is, this is a good outcome. While the U.S. did not receive anywhere close to the 52,000 names that it requested from UBS earlier this year, as Bob Williams at TaxVox pointed out, the UBS probe has “really juiced the amnesty program,” under which tax evaders turn themselves in for smaller (though still hefty) penalties. Last month, for instance, the IRS reported that more than 400 evaders showed up in one week, “four times as many as in all of last year.” So the mere fact that the IRS wore down UBS is chasing other tax evaders out of the woodwork.

However, UBS is really the tip of the iceberg when it comes to tax evasion. The IRS estimates that about $5 trillion in assets is held in tax havens worldwide. In a report released last month, the Congressional Research Service said that the U.S. loses $40-$70 billion in annual revenue due to tax avoidance by individuals and another $10-$60 billion in corporate tax evasion. This squares with a report from the U.S. PIRG, which found that tax evasion shifts a $100 billion annual tax burden onto the individuals and corporations that do pay taxes in the U.S.

According to the Government Accountability Office, 83 of the 100 largest U.S. corporations have subsidiaries in nations judged by the US to be tax havens. In the Cayman Islands, for instance, “one mailing address alone houses 18,857 corporations.”

So this is a very widespread problem. To deal with it, the administration has proposed a handful of changes to the tax code — which are being vigorously opposed by the business lobby — and a doubling of the tax enforcement budget. These are good steps that would mitigate at least some of the evasion that is going on (although I’m willing to bet that armies of tax lawyers are already figuring out new ways around all of the changes). That UBS finally caved is definitely a victory, but there is far more that needs to be done.

Today, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Labor Department is “signaling it will soon begin putting in practice the more assertive regulation of business [Labor Secretary Hilda Solis] promised early in her tenure.” As part of that effort, “there will be 150 investigators added in the Wage and Hour division to enforce wage rules and child-labor laws.”

This increase is a smart move. As USA Today reported this week, “complaints of wage theft have risen as the economy tumbled.” In Austin, the Workers Defense Project received 63 complaints in June, compared with 25 it had in June last year, while Chicago’s Working Hands Legal Clinic received 252 complaints in the first half of this year, compared with 161 in the same period last year.

However, the administration’s nominee to run the Wage and Hour Division is still stuck in the Senate. Lorelei Boylan, the Director of Strategic Enforcement at the New York State Department of Labor, was announced as the nominee on April 14 and formally nominated on May 11, but has not even received a confirmation hearing before the Senate HELP Committee. By contrast, President Bush’s nominee for this position was confirmed in less than three months. As Bruce Goldstein put it at Harvesting Justice:

The failure to allow the President to place leaders of his choice in these positions severaly harms the Department’s capacity to enforce farmworkers’ rights and improve the operation of the agency. The Senate’s parliamentary rules (and lack of them) allow individuals substantial power. The failure of the Senate majority to force these long-delayed confirmations over the objection of whoever is stalling is harming the most vulnerable working people in this country.

The Wage and Hour Division was allowed to languish under former Secretary Elaine Chao, and is undeniably a mess, as a Government Accountability Office report from March revealed. To compile its report, the GAO called in some fictitious labor violations to the agency, to see how it responded. The results were not encouraging:

WHD successfully investigated 1 of our 10 fictitious cases, correctly identifying and investigating a business that had multiple complaints filed against it by our fictitious complainants. Five of our 10 complaints were not recorded in WHD’s database and 2 of 10 were recorded as successfully paid when in fact the fictitious complainants reported to WHD they had not been paid.

Boylan’s task force in New York, meanwhile, “flourished into a groundbreaking investigative unit with a high rate of success in resolving wage and hour investigations.” When it comes back from recess, the Senate needs to confirm her, so that the Labor Department has a competent administrator leading its fight against wage theft.