Following the German government's purchase of information about the foreign banking activities of German tax payers, and owing to increasingly severe punishments for tax fraud, more and more German tax payers are filing corrected returns in order to avoid criminal prosecution. Tax payers are also encouraged to correct returns by the new tax regime on capital gains from privately held property, which are subject to 25 per cent flat tax.

Germany and Switzerland are discussing an anonymous amnesty for German tax payers who had undeclared money in Swiss bank accounts during the last decade. The Swiss banks would pay an amount of a few billion euros (20 to 30 per cent of the undeclared property) to the German state to legalise the money without naming the taxpayers.