[HN Gopher] EU-wide maximum limit of EUR10K for cash payments
___________________________________________________________________
EU-wide maximum limit of EUR10K for cash payments
Author : tosh
Score : 166 points
Date : 2022-12-10 10:05 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.consilium.europa.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.consilium.europa.eu)
| freefaler wrote:
| The EU "government" (a non-directly elected entity) is
| predictably trying to enforce tax rules. Even worse is the
| minimum tax on profits that targets the poorer members by
| removing one of the ways they can compete with bigger ones.
| "...No Ireland, you're not allowed to have low taxes, we the
| guideposts of EU - France and Germany tax our people and
| companies up to 30-45%, what's that meager 10% tax you're giving
| them? ..."
| namdnay wrote:
| > a non-directly elected entity
|
| Like most governments?
| retinaros wrote:
| tax rates in ireland are 20-40% for employees. yes they make it
| cheaper for billion dollar valued companies.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > a non-directly elected entity
|
| _The EU Parliament is composed of 705 members (MEPs). It
| represents the second-largest democratic electorate in the
| world (after the Parliament of India), with an electorate of
| 375 million eligible voters_
|
| p.s. even the US president is a non-directly elected entity
| UncleEntity wrote:
| The US president doesn't write laws though. Ignoring
| executive orders, of course.
|
| The people who do write the laws are directly elected at all
| levels of government.
| funstuff007 wrote:
| Yes, but if Ireland were not part of the EU there would be no
| tax arbitrage and Ireland would pick a market determined corp
| tax rate.
| dawkins wrote:
| In Spain the limit is 1KEUR
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| Is that for all transactions?
|
| I thought it was the case in France, too, but as it turns out
| that's the limit only when one party is a company. There's no
| limit for transactions between individuals (with a few
| exceptions).
|
| https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F10999?...
| jaclaz wrote:
| In Italy it is 2,000 Euro, the current governement proposal is
| to raise it to 5,000 and there was a lot of debates about it
| (according to previous measures it should have become 1,000
| Euro in 2023).
|
| Germany - I believe - has no set limit, Greece has 500 Euro.
|
| The anti-laundering (and anti-terrorism) usefulness of limiting
| the amount of cash per payment has some merit, but (IMHO) it
| won't affect at all the illegal transactions (to evade taxes
| and VAT), it is news of these days of an ex-member of the EU
| parliament arrested in Bruxelles (in connection with presumed
| bribes related to the Qatar football world championship)
| arrested and found in possession of around 600,000 Euro cash.
|
| https://www.politico.eu/article/belgium-police-raid-gulf-lob...
| 6dFkRPkfv7pe wrote:
| zokula wrote:
| okokwhatever wrote:
| Black Market is gonna surge baby! To the moon!
| fmajid wrote:
| It's Qatar:
|
| https://www.euractiv.com/section/justice-home-affairs/news/b...
| AHappyCamper wrote:
| This is obviously the first part of a major push to force us to
| use Central Bank Digital Currencies. Now that they are banning
| cash, we will be controlled like never before. This is the
| beginning of the end of freedom.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| > Now that they are banning cash
|
| You're talking as if a speed limit is equivalent to banning
| cars. The regulation of a given operation is not akin to
| outright banning it and to assert that is hyperbole.
| defaulter4once wrote:
| It seems like a technocrat's dream come true! :D
| mr90210 wrote:
| If you still believe that you are free, you are quite clueless.
| pelorat wrote:
| Define freedom.
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| You don't need CBDC, just the existing system today. Here in
| the UK something like 3% of money is available as paper cash.
| The rest is just a row in a database.
|
| Assets are zero sum - if i sell you my car, i no longer have
| that asset. Money is not zero sum. It is created and destroyed
| as loans are made and repaid. Which kinda frazzles people's
| minds when they hear it. I know it certainly did mine when i
| first learned.
|
| https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/reservereq.htm
| isodev wrote:
| I think you are jumping the gun on freedom here.
|
| There are very few remaining instances in the region where
| people still pay large sums in cash. Transaction costs are so
| low (and mostly nonexistent) that cash remains in use either in
| very specialised circumstances or as part of "grey economy"
| activities.
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| WHO CARES if it "only has a few instances". I will never
| understand where people will say that having our right
| LITERALLY REMOVED somehow isn't eroding our freedom. It
| simply is, you are objectively less free now.
| Teandw wrote:
| Let's be honest for a second. There are very few instances
| where a person would ever 'need' to pay for something over
| EUR10k in physical cash?
| lzaaz wrote:
| A vehicle, a house...
| senda wrote:
| Sure if you don't want to pay tax
| lzaaz wrote:
| That's right, I don't.
|
| Good thing about cars and houses is that you can pay some
| amount officially and then pay more money under the
| table.
| bigfudge wrote:
| Right. But that is illegal and in my view also immoral.
| If you want to change the law campaign for it. But
| breaking tax laws is not a victimless crime. You are
| freeloading/stealing from the rest of us.
| lzaaz wrote:
| It's impossible to make people vote to give themselves
| less money.
| manscrober wrote:
| you don't pay tax on a used vehicle
| estebank wrote:
| That depends on the country.
| bakugo wrote:
| Why does it matter what I "need"? Why is it any of your
| business what I do with my money? I should have the right to
| spend it how I want, it's mine.
| ericmay wrote:
| I don't think "need" is a good reason here or for anywhere
| else. You don't _need_ to pay for things in cash, you don't
| _need_ to make more money, you don't _need_ to play soccer.
|
| Etc.
| Teandw wrote:
| What I mean is that for that sort of money, it would be
| somewhat strange to "want" to pay in cash. You wouldn't
| walk 200 miles on foot to go meet a friend when you had a
| car on the driveaway?
| coldtea wrote:
| I should still be able if I want to.
| mort96 wrote:
| > You wouldn't walk 200 miles on foot to go meet a friend
| when you had a car on the driveaway?
|
| Perfect example. I wouldn't do that, no, but I wouldn't
| want it to be illegal.
| Teandw wrote:
| True but would you want it to be illegal if the vast
| majority people that did walk 200 miles on foot instead
| of driving, did it because they were doing it to get away
| with committing a crime?
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| So make the criminal act at the end of the journey
| illegal, not the act of walking 200 miles on foot.
|
| This feels like the question of Blackstone's ratio: "It
| is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one
| innocent suffer." I'm not an absolutist about these
| things, but I take Blackstone's side of this (very
| difficult) question.
| ccn0p wrote:
| uh huh. and "Member states will have the flexibility to
| impose a lower maximum limit if they wish."
|
| Don't worry, the water around us that's heating up is for our
| own good and not at all to cook us.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| Never bought a secondhand car have you?
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| At the current pace of inflation, in 20 years EUR10k won't
| even pay a month's rent for a house or decent flat.
| Demonetization laws with fixed monetary amounts under
| inflationary systems are tyrannical.
| mberning wrote:
| Horrible take. 10k is a pittance. Small business owners,
| farmers, people buying and selling vehicles, etc. It's not a
| large amount of money. If you go down to the apple store and
| buy a couple well specced computers the bill is going to be
| over 10k.
| jaynetics wrote:
| So are you from Europe? Or do you know anyone in Europe who
| has made such a transaction in physical cash?
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| Large denomination Cash handling for legitimate businesses
| has been a hassle for a long time already. I'm not sure how
| many businesses want to handle large cash amounts.
|
| You can't even buy a car in cash here any more.
| isodev wrote:
| Very few (if any) Apple stores will accept that amount in
| cash. A lot of stores and businesses (also the likes of
| Carrefour and Albert Heijn) have been phasing out setups
| needed for cash payments. Even if you find a way to pay
| cash, it will be on a separate (long and slow) queue or
| they will need to exceptionally call their supervisor to
| handle the payment.
| nly wrote:
| Americans aren't used banking systems that work.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Americans don't use such large sums of cash in
| transactions very frequently, do others?
|
| The only large exception I am aware of is dispensaries
| because banks don't want potential drug money laundering
| charges.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| I feel like we have decent banking here...?
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| I'd imagine it's fairly unlikely you're paying cash for
| that large amount, most people would choose a more
| convenient form of transfer surely?
|
| How much time is wasted in these transactions just counting
| and verifying the money?
|
| Also what if lots of people decided to transact like this.
| It's not like the banks have paper to back all your
| deposits, they'd need time to go physically print paper if
| it became that popular a medium.
| Teandw wrote:
| I very much doubt there are money people that walk into an
| apple store with 10k in their back pocket to pay for some
| computers.
|
| Same with farmers. How many farmers living in this modern
| age are walking around with 10k in their back pockets? In
| the vast majority of cases, I would argue that people just
| use their bank account for such large payments these days.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > I would argue that people just use their bank account
| for such large payments these days.
|
| Yup, and now they are _forced_ to. Its a single point of
| failure. One which the government conveniently has
| control over.
|
| I'm surprised the HN crowd isn't grasping this more
| clearly. Backups are important.
| csdigi wrote:
| It depends on how they got their income in the first
| place. My family are dairy farmers and frequently trade
| cattle at local auctions. This is still a cash based
| society (rural Ireland), it does not take many heads of
| cattle to make up 10k, many other deals are done
| informally (e.g. my grandfather buying cows from a
| neighbor without auction) with a value that is of that
| order. The money may hit a bank account if something more
| formal needs to be bought (insurance, new machinery etc)
| but those are not all that common.
|
| As a child I would always remember my grandfather
| carrying (at least in the house) large rolls of bills.
| coldtea wrote:
| Yes, and "if you have nothing to hide, you don't need
| privacy".
| beefield wrote:
| It's a pity that the venn diagrams of people who understand the
| need for private money transactions and people who understand the
| macroeconomic need of (occasional) negative interest rates do not
| in practice seem to overlap.
| radford-neal wrote:
| The usual argument for why negative interest rates might be
| needed is to prevent deflation. But in a fiat currency system
| like we have, it is always extremely easy for governments to
| reduce the value of the currency (ie, stop deflation). They can
| just print more money. In detail, they can just finance
| government expenditures with money created out of nothing, if
| necessary cutting taxes to provide more need for money to be
| created that way. This is in fact what has happened many, many
| times. It's not some strange fringe theory. There is no doubt
| whatever that it works. There is no need for negative nominal
| interest rates.
| sphinxster wrote:
| Why is it a pity? Over time it will be revealed which group was
| thinking with the most clarity and prudence.
| beefield wrote:
| It's a pity because we should be seeking solutions for _both_
| problems, money system allowing negative rates _and_ private
| transactions. They should not exclude each other because both
| are important for different reasons.
| 127 wrote:
| This will improve democracy and freedom, how? Values both US and
| EU supposedly stand for.
|
| Bad practices and horrible incentives happen throughout society.
| It's not just money laundering that's the problem. It's much
| easier to get wealth and power in exchange for your regulatory
| actions from powerful actors if you have more control on the
| citizens. It's much easier to extract wealth and resources from
| people who have less power over you. The less economic freedom
| you give people, the less they have incentive to create new
| wealth.
|
| Stricter money controls will increase political corruption.
| kuon wrote:
| Here in Switzerland we used to use cash for a lot of things, I
| remember paying my car in cash. It has changed a lot with covid.
| I do not know the regulation on any limit.
| mcv wrote:
| My mother once told me that when they bought their first house
| in 1980, she had to go to the bank to withdraw the mortgage
| loan in cash, bicycle to another bank (or possibly the notary?)
| to pay for the house in cash. She was understandably nervous,
| carrying that much money around.
| BlueZeniX wrote:
| Everyone saying "muh GDPR" has no clue none of it applies to
| financial transactions.
|
| To get a PSD2 "Open Banking" license one needs to KYC every user
| and keep every transaction that passes through the system, for 5
| years, including the KYC data.
|
| Being PSD2 licensed doesn't even make you a bank. Just imagine
| what an actual bank has to keep around...
|
| Also every business has to keep invoices and transaction data
| around for tax audits, usually 7 years. So you can GDPR delete
| request all you want, but the shop where you bought that thing
| still has to legally know you've bought it.
| chmod775 wrote:
| That'll go over well with Germans. Cold dead hands, prying, and
| whatever.
|
| Good luck.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Could you please be clearer? Please also expand the assumptions
| - you are being too obscure.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| I think he's alluding to the fact that Germans use cash
| almost all of the time.
| m00dy wrote:
| and I confirm it is a correct statement.
| Certhas wrote:
| Germany dislike credit cards and pay small sums in cash.
| Anything substantial is done by Uberweisung/bank transfer and
| has been forever.
|
| I never had a cheque book in Germany.
| fh973 wrote:
| How do you pay for a used car?
| maxnoe wrote:
| My father in law was a used Carsten salesman until he
| fetired two years ago.
|
| Most used cars are bought using loans. I.e. the bank
| provides a loan specifically for bying that car, directly
| via the dealership.
| retinaros wrote:
| its always to fight corruption and trafficing right?
| newaccount74 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure a big goal is to fight tax evasion.
|
| I can't speak for all of EU, but here in Austria tax evasion is
| very common.
|
| For example, it's still extremely common to pay contractors
| under the table. They will ask you if you need an invoice, and
| the price will be a lot lower if you don't.
|
| Another example are restaurants. For a few years it has been
| required that restaurants always provide you with a receipt,
| but especially asian restaurants still don't do so.
|
| All that untaxed revenue costs the state billions in missing
| taxes.
|
| If you limit cash payments, then you make it at least slightly
| harder for someone to eg. buy a car with that untaxed money.
|
| I really don't see any reason why you would need 10kEUR cash
| payments if not for tax evasion.
| siftrics wrote:
| What if the government is tyrannical or arbitrarily seizes
| your funds?
| yrgulation wrote:
| Not sure why you are getting downvoted. The government of
| cyprus did seize bank deposits during the 2013 crisis. In
| some european countries i spoke to people who worried the
| same will have happened during the onset of covid and then
| the war started by russia.
| orthoxerox wrote:
| > I really don't see any reason why you would need 10kEUR
| cash payments if not for tax evasion.
|
| To avoid banking fees?
| TillE wrote:
| There are no fees for bank transfers in Europe.
| yrgulation wrote:
| There are. Not international fees as such but there are
| bank to bank fees.
| lultimouomo wrote:
| I have not seen a SEPA wire transfer cost more than 1EUR
| since SEPA wire transfers have existed. Which would make
| the fee at most 0.01% for >10kEUR payments.
| yrgulation wrote:
| Regardless of how small the fee, there is a fee that you
| are being forced to pay.
| Symbiote wrote:
| A fee of EUR0.50 would be on the high side for a transfer
| of EUR10000.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| or to protect the children
| falcor84 wrote:
| Well at least it's not "think of the children" this time
| andai wrote:
| It's to phase out cash. Can't be a good citizen unless every
| transaction is logged and monitored!
| collegeburner wrote:
| and in 5 years, you'll be using the great new CBDC! so the
| ECB can automatically remove your money to comply with
| negative interest rates!
| mdp2021 wrote:
| At least with CBDC there seems to be a way planned for
| anonimity:
|
| > _There are two types of retail CBDCs. They differ in how
| individual users access and use their currency: // Token-
| based retail CBDCs are accessible with private/public keys.
| This method of validation allows users to execute
| transactions anonymously // Account-based retail CBDCs
| require digital identification to access an account // The
| two types of CBDCs, wholesale and retail, are not mutually
| exclusive[ - i]t is possible to develop both and have them
| function in the same economy_
|
| Pretty important, because currently having anonymous
| electronic transaction is heavily difficult.
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/central-bank-digital-
| cu...
| buran77 wrote:
| By the time Madame Lagarde is done a lot of people will be
| praying to still have something in the bank to pay negative
| interest for.
|
| With the current inflation EUR10.000 will be worth far less
| in the near future, and I'm certain the amount won't be
| updated yearly to account for that. This 10k "magic number"
| has stayed the same for a long time. This isn't about money
| laundering as much as about control over even relatively
| low value cash transactions.
| defaulter4once wrote:
| Lagarde is a criminal with connections...
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38369822 "A French
| court has found International Monetary Fund chief
| Christine Lagarde guilty of negligence but did not hand
| down any punishment."
| mdp2021 wrote:
| It's a promotion of barter.
|
| (I understand in this tree the '/S' is taken for granted.)
| [deleted]
| stuckinhell wrote:
| I've noticed some similar in America recently. I've got friends
| who move 5-6 figure sums for various personal businesses, and
| their banks have been extra critical of their transactions. One
| bank got so annoying, that my friend tried to close the account,
| and couldn't! Lately hearing more and more stories about people
| getting de-banked, as been making me feel a little nervous.
|
| In the cases of the banks and my business friends, I'm more
| worried the banks are extremely over leveraged and don't want to
| part with any cash (like 2008 on steroids).
|
| - reposting this comment from another article on nigerian cash
| limits
| itronitron wrote:
| " _In the fall of 2019 there was no war in Ukraine, there was
| no pandemic. But for still undisclosed reasons, the Fed decided
| to funnel trillions of dollars in cumulative repo loans to the
| trading units of U.S. megabanks and their foreign
| counterparties. The Fed's repo loans stretched from September
| 17, 2019 through July 2, 2020._ "
|
| >> https://wallstreetonparade.com/2022/04/global-megabanks-
| are-...
| CharlesW wrote:
| I believe this has been the case in the U.S. since 2013:
| https://www.occ.treas.gov/topics/supervision-and-examination...
| vl wrote:
| Underreported info is that during many months of pandemic you
| couldn't withdraw any significant amounts of cash.
|
| I decided to withdraw $10k just in case and they told me
| maximum they can do is $1k per day and this story repeated for
| many months.
| pavlov wrote:
| This is not very surprising since there was a run even on
| toilet paper in March 2020. (I remember the empty shelves in
| Manhattan, and my relatives in Finland told the same story.)
|
| If people will buy stacks of toilet paper they don't need, of
| course they would empty the cash machines too.
| reachableceo wrote:
| From the atm or the teller ?
|
| ATM limit of 1k is common.
|
| My small local credit union keeps about 10k in each of the
| tellers drawers . So you should be able to easily go up to
| 50k cash withdrawal .
|
| If it's a large multinational , 100k I suspect.
|
| Also why not just go 10 days in a row and pull out 1k?
| rmasters wrote:
| > Also why not just go 10 days in a row and pull out 1k?
|
| In the US, this could be considered "structuring" to avoid
| reporting requirements which is a federal crime with a
| sentence of up to 5 years in prison.
| wcoenen wrote:
| If the reason to pull out 1K/day is a 1K/day limit
| imposed by the bank, then the reason is obviously not to
| avoid reporting requirements and therefore it cannot be
| considered structuring.
| 1jbdg wrote:
| There is not an issue with the safety of banks. There was an
| issue with the amount of physical cash in the right place -
| during the pandemic (like any panic, recession etc) lots of
| people rush to cash and there isn't enough of it. May mean
| the same thing when you can't get the cash but it's an
| important distinction. Ultimately very few people use cash so
| why have massive stocks everywhere, use it or lose it
| people...
| woodruffw wrote:
| I saw plenty of reporting on this, and nearly all of it was
| editorialized: it was being treated as evidence that customer
| savings weren't available, when the actual reason is that
| bank branches simply don't keep massive vaults of money on
| hand.
|
| If you have a bank account, you can always withdraw your
| savings (at least up to the amount insured, in the event of a
| bank collapse). But there has _never_ been a guarantee that
| you can walk up to a teller and leave with your life savings
| in a bag; you should _always_ call ahead and coordinate with
| the bank to ensure that they have the physical paper
| available. In many cases, they 'll redirect you to a
| specialized or more central branch.
| Spivak wrote:
| And 99% of the time people do that is because they're
| moving banks and they leave with a cashiers check instead
| of cash.
| omginternets wrote:
| So, to be clear, you can't actually liquidate your
| account.
| woodruffw wrote:
| You can always liquidate your account. What you _can 't_
| do is make it some random branch's problem in a spur-of-
| the-moment decision; you have to plan it with them.
| wara23arish wrote:
| I used to work for a bank in the US as a teller before
| 2019.
|
| You absolutely can walk in and ask for 12K in cash. That
| amount is normal.
|
| If you're asking for 30-50K then coordination is needed,
| and its not because money is not available, simply because
| youd need to open the vault and that takes time.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I think there's a large degree of variance here: I've
| been in places that would have struggled to hand over
| $1000 in cash, since they might have had only 2-3 times
| that _total_ on hand for the entire week.
|
| That was in a small town, but that's my point: anecdotes
| about being unable to withdraw money are more about
| logistics than a banking collapse being hidden from the
| public.
| flandish wrote:
| With inflation, "worker shortages", and prices rising - 10,000
| will soon become within reach for lots of normal people.
|
| Pushing them to NEED to use a profit driven banking system.
| Forcing them to be tracked. To have data mined and sold. To rely
| on "too big to fail" banking systems that practically schedule
| economic downturns every 20 years or so.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| 10000EUR will soon be 5000EUR, then 2500EUR... make absolutely
| no mistake it's all about replacing cash with "Digital Euro",
| something the EU will have entire control on.
| gattilorenz wrote:
| Ah, good ol' slippery slope arguments
| [deleted]
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Yes. Good old "look where the trend is going, foresee the
| risks".
|
| Ah, remembering the surprise of upset people when they did
| not raise a suspect in front of bank clerks telling you
| "It's contactless, limited risk, 25u per transaction" (and
| already then the child-basic retort is "Times by how many
| transactions?"), and then were reached by the bank
| information that "owing to progress the limit is now raised
| to 50u / 100u / 150u ..."
| retinaros wrote:
| dont worry others will fight so that you too can be free to
| take your blue pill
| eastbound wrote:
| "You will never have to show a QR code to enter a
| restaurant." -- France's health minister in 2020.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Usually they allow inflation to slowly bracket creep which
| has the same effect. For example the Bank Secrecy Act of
| 1970 sets reporting at $10K which would be ~$80K today.
| I've seen legislation for fines that has built in modifiers
| for inflation so the government knows how account for it.
| flandish wrote:
| The slippery slope is, quite truly, how nation states
| operate. If they were worried abt terrorism, they'd stop
| terrorists. But this "change" ... treats innocent people
| with the brush they use for terrorists... it's a slippery
| slope by design.
| sofixa wrote:
| > Pushing them to NEED to use a profit driven banking system.
|
| Profit driven, but available literally for free for an account
| and transfers (depending on the bank).
|
| > To have data mined and sold.
|
| GDPR says no.
|
| > To rely on "too big to fail" banking systems that practically
| schedule economic downturns every 20 years or so.
|
| We're talking about the EU here, not the US. There are a ton of
| challenger new banks.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| >GDPR says no.
|
| GDPR isn't infallible. The EU and its individual countries
| have plenty of controversies.
|
| >ton of challenger new banks.
|
| Ton is a gross overstatement. It's a few that are truly
| independent from anyone else. The remainder are puppet /
| daughter banks.
|
| Their existence barely influences the status quo and it
| certainly doesn't prevent outrage whenever banks used by over
| half the country's population threaten to fall.
| omginternets wrote:
| Most of those challenger banks are backed by old school
| banks.
| ilyt wrote:
| > Profit driven, but available literally for free for an
| account and transfers (depending on the bank).
|
| So not for free. It would be one thing if banks had to
| guarantee those transactions being free but many banks want %
| of transaction in fees
| baybal2 wrote:
| _> Terrorists and those who finance them are not welcome in
| Europe. In order to launder dirty money, criminal individuals and
| organisations had to look for loopholes in our existing rules
| which are already quite strict._
|
| Russian mafia is living in billion dollar mansions all around EU
| in the open, with full knowledge of EU 3 letter services.
|
| Why would anybody go for "retail" laundering when you can buy a
| bank for a pocket change in Cyprus?
|
| Ways to launder money fully legally are vastly, vastly more
| widespread than mules with bags of cash, and are protected by
| connivance of Western governments.
| yrgulation wrote:
| > Russian mafia is living in billion dollar mansions all around
| EU in the open, with full knowledge of EU 3 letter services.
|
| Those people hide their assets in swiss banks, along with
| dictators and corrupt politicians.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| First line in the article:
|
| > The EU continues its fight to protect EU citizens and the EU's
| financial system against money laundering and terrorist
| financing.
|
| The EU has control of the propaganda machine at levels comparable
| to the Soviet Union. We should've just let them have it.
|
| I wonder how many Europeans are going to get in this thread to
| tell us Americans how much more privacy they have.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| European here. The EU can go to hell and I long for the day
| when the union will finally implode.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Who do you think makes these rules and laws in the EU?
| Belgians? Reptilians?
|
| It's the elected by the people of each country and the
| appointed by those elected by the people of each country.
|
| EU is not a subscription provided by 3rd parties, EU is about
| coordination between the the European countries and any
| country can veto. That's actually why EU is considered slow
| and inefficient in some areas.
|
| If EU says no more cash payments over 10K EUR, that means all
| the member countries agree that no more cash payments over
| 10K EUR.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| > Who do you think makes these rules and laws in the EU?
| Belgians? Reptilians?
|
| Germany and France, mostly.
|
| > European countries and any country can veto. That's
| actually why EU is considered slow and inefficient in some
| areas.
|
| First of all, this is not true. There's no single party
| veto on legislation. Secondly, the US states have an even
| more effective veto, which is just ignoring federal law,
| because nobody can force them to enforce it.
|
| And having no single-party veto on legislation means that
| if you're from a smaller EU country, you'll never EVER have
| any meaningful impact on _anything_.
|
| > If EU says no more cash payments over 10K EUR, that means
| all the member countries agree that no more cash payments
| over 10K EUR.
|
| As explained before, nope. It's true that there is single-
| party veto on certain things (admissions to the Union
| itself, the eurozone, or schengen, but not for legislation)
| mrtksn wrote:
| So you believe that your country politicians were all
| into large cash payments but the French and the Germans
| are making you go digital?
|
| Which country may I ask?
| sgjohnson wrote:
| In my country cash payments over EUR8k were already
| banned, but it's a largely unenforced law.
| mrtksn wrote:
| And how is that EU's fault and what makes you think that
| your politicians were loving the large cash payments but
| Germany and France made them ban >10K EUR payments?
|
| Which country again?
| sgjohnson wrote:
| Latvia
| mrtksn wrote:
| So you think that Latvia, which has 8K EUR cash limit is
| forced by be Germany and France to not allow cash
| payments over 10K EUR and you are dreaming of the
| destruction of EU so you can do above 10K EUR cash
| transactions?
| dbspin wrote:
| EU citizen here. You are not representative. The EU is an
| incredible boon to civil rights, national wealth and our
| consumer protections are enviable.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| > The EU is an incredible boon to civil rights
|
| We don't even have a true right to free speech. That puts
| us behind the U.S., because I struggle to think of a "civil
| right" that we have but Americans don't.
|
| And before you pull "healthcare", first of all, it's got
| nothing to do with the EU, and secondly, in most EU
| countries the state-funded healthcare is so abysmal that
| everyone who can afford it still takes out private
| insurance.
|
| > and our consumer protections are enviable.
|
| Like GDPR, which is a legislation so fantastic that for
| most businesses it's physically impossible to truly comply
| with it?
| sofixa wrote:
| > We don't even have a true right to free speech. That
| puts us behind the U.S., because I struggle to think of a
| "civil right" that we have but Americans don't.
|
| > And before you pull "healthcare", first of all, it's
| got nothing to do with the EU, and secondly, in most EU
| countries the state-funded healthcare is so abysmal that
| everyone who can afford it still takes out private
| insurance.
|
| So free speech is an EU matter but healthcare is a local
| one? No, both are decided locally with limited EU
| oversight - e.g. the EU is trying to punish Poland and
| Hungary's free speech limitations.
|
| > We don't even have a true right to free speech
|
| Specifically this is a no true Scotsman fallacy.
| Legislation prohibiting antisemitic speech doesn't make
| free speech not "truly free", it just makes it not
| absolute, which is IMO necessary for a civilised
| developed society, as long as there are controls to
| ensure it's not abused.
|
| > Like GDPR, which is a legislation so fantastic that for
| most businesses it's physically impossible to truly
| comply with it?
|
| Why do you think that? The majority of business comply
| with it.
|
| In terms of civil rights we have more than Americans -
| abortions (in most places, not an EU but local thing),
| the right not to get murdered by poor policing or
| overarmed population, consumer protections such as
| mandatory minimum warranties and return periods. Also
| there are much better employee and tenant protections.
|
| Also a _much_ better political and judicial system -
| first past the post? Politically appointed judges?
|
| All in all, the EU is a marvelous thing that has enabled
| peace and prosperity across a continent, and has done far
| more good than bad - universal phone chargers, consumer
| protections at every level (flight delays, warranties,
| data), the new forced interoperability between
| gatekeepers, the euro and SEPA, the subsidies that have
| enabled so much development. Anyone rooting against it
| probably doesn't understand it all that well, or is an
| isolationist.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| > Also a much better political and judicial system -
| first past the post? Politically appointed judges?
|
| Much better judicial system? What about not having jury
| trials is better?
|
| Without having a jury that decides your fate makes the
| entire process political.
|
| Politically appointed judges? That's just federal, in the
| US most state judges are elected. The DA is an elected
| office. In virtually all european countries they are all
| appointed offices. Appointed by the politicians in
| charge.
|
| Justice system in most EU countries absolutely sucks
| compared to the US. In several EU countries there's no
| concept as double jeopardy, because the prosecution can
| appeal an acquital.
|
| I'd much rather be a defendant in the US, than in any EU
| country.
|
| > So free speech is an EU matter but healthcare is a
| local one? No, both are decided locally with limited EU
| oversight - e.g. the EU is trying to punish Poland and
| Hungary's free speech limitations.
|
| ECJ explicitly stated that objectionable or hate speech
| can be banned. So yes, that made it EU matter.
|
| As for the EU doing something about Polands and Hungary's
| disobedience? They don't actually seem to be doing
| anything, because the EU as an institution is completely
| impotent, and they can't risk being tough on their member
| states, for the Union could actually disintegrate. UK
| proved that is, in fact, physically possible to leave the
| EU. So Hungary could do that too, and so could Poland.
| bonzini wrote:
| > Appointed by the politicians in charge.
|
| I am not sure where you got this idea. In Italy most
| judges/DAs go through a selection process that is
| entirely within the judiciary. Only one third of the
| Constitutional Court is appointed by the Parliament.
| yrgulation wrote:
| And huge disparity between south, east and west,
| discrimination, worker exploitation, systemic racism
| against europe's minorities, human trafficking and cross
| border corruption, policies made to serve some countries
| and not others, and those european countries not within the
| eu or affiliated effectively isolated.
| pelorat wrote:
| > systemic racism against europe's minorities, human
| trafficking and cross border corruption, policies made to
| serve some countries and not others
|
| You are describing the USA.
| yrgulation wrote:
| Here in europe even trying to humanise the roma can be an
| issue. Those people are so discriminated against that
| even defending them is looked down upon. Entire countries
| are maligned simply because they have a large number of
| this minority. No ethnic group in the us is as
| discriminated as these folks are in europe. America has
| not known such racism since the end of slavery.
|
| Corruption is well obvious. See ursula, the head of the
| ecb and so on.
| defaulter4once wrote:
| The EU is a boon for the mercantile class. It's by
| design... ;-)
| dbspin wrote:
| It lifted my country as well as dozens of others out of
| developing world status. There's a huge delta in national
| wealth between post soviet nations who joined the EU and
| those that didn't for example. A rising tide raises all
| boats.
| defaulter4once wrote:
| Your reply sounds like a cheerleader chant. :D Did the
| common person benefit from this "lift" that you mention
| or merely the technocrat who was willing to do the
| bidding of the new master?
| sofixa wrote:
| Yes, it lifted everyone. Take a look into any stat on
| minimum/median salary, standard of living, HDI in any
| Central or Eastern European country that joined the EU
| against those that didn't - the gulf is _massive_. Also
| having lived in one such country before and after joining
| - yes, the EU helped lift everyone upwards.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| The eastern europe will lose the most in long run,
| because the EU caused a massive brain drain.
|
| For the west it's just a matter of money. The demographic
| crisis in the east is real.
| AntiRemoteWork wrote:
| sofixa wrote:
| The demographic crisis is real in the Eastern European
| countries not in the EU (Western Balkans, former USSR)
| too, but at least the standard of living has massively
| improved in the EU member states.
| pelorat wrote:
| "Eastern" Europe shouldn't exist, it should be just
| Europe. How is there a demographic crisis in the east?
| sgjohnson wrote:
| > How is there a demographic crisis in the east?
|
| Net emigration & a fertility rate of 1.7 is what I'd call
| "demographic crisis"
| ilyt wrote:
| Well, we do, if you don't like that fact complain to your
| government.
|
| "Oh look at those EUROPERANS with their fancy PRIVACY, real men
| get fucked unlubed by corporations and LIKE IT" doesn't help
| anyone here, the fight here is to make government do well by
| average citizen, not throwing insults at people that happen to
| be fucked differently by their government
| defaulter4once wrote:
| European here. It's mostly a lure meant to make you docile and
| content. Same as Musk buying Twitter, so you feel like the
| "Good Guys" are winning again and you can go back to sleep. :D
| Blue111 wrote:
| Crypto for the win (Monero).
| Teandw wrote:
| This change would affect Monero too. If you buy Monero through
| any sort of company that is following the law, they will have
| to enforce this on their customers.
| Blue111 wrote:
| Ideally, you could afford to never have to convert your
| Moneros to cash.
| [deleted]
| gattilorenz wrote:
| For context, few countries in the EU don't have any limit to cash
| payments.
|
| Most of them introduced them to decrease tax evasion, not money
| laundering.
|
| You can still have that much money in cash, just not pay with it
| one transaction.
| [deleted]
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _to decrease tax evasion_
|
| Through a very obscure logic, since payment cap cannot exclude
| unregistered payments.
| lultimouomo wrote:
| They point is making it hard for the tax evaders to spend
| their cash (which they cannot deposit in the bank since it's
| way more than they officially earn) in law abiding shops.
| whinvik wrote:
| > Hiding behind multiple layers of ownership of companies won't
| work any more.
|
| Didn't they literally last week make a law to make this harder?
| guilhas wrote:
| Reference:
|
| No longer possible for the public to learn who owns a EU
| company https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33836543
| Signez wrote:
| No, they have not made a new law last week, but one of the
| highest courts has decided that this data should not be public
| (as the regulations stand, especially in relation to the GDPR).
| Nothing prevents the European Union institutions from updating
| the regulations on the subject.
|
| ...and this is what they seem to suggest in this paragraph,
| which is a clear reminder of this event:
|
| > Member states should ensure that any natural or legal person
| that can demonstrate a legitimate interest has access to
| information held in the beneficial ownership registers, and
| such persons should include those journalists and civil society
| organisations that are connected with the prevention and
| combating of money laundering and terrorist financing.
| woodpanel wrote:
| I just love how the grandstanding of European green-progressives
| of the past, when they positioned themselves as champions of
| privacy, completely flipped once they came to power.
|
| _" Name one practical reason to pay amounts higher than 1.000EUR
| in cash." - unknown progressive_
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > "Name one practical reason to pay amounts higher than
| 1.000EUR in cash."
|
| it's 10.000 euros, you're off by an order of magnitude.
|
| Can you name one practical reason to pay more than 10k cash?
| ahtihn wrote:
| Buying a used car.
| ilyt wrote:
| Car, house, selling/buying land etc.
|
| Mostly coz many banks take % cut on big money tranfers so
| taking it out and just giving it to someone in a bag is
| sometimes tens of thousands cheaper
| bonzini wrote:
| Not in Europe. Bought a car last year, transferring the
| money was EUR0.50.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Sizeable withdrawals aren't exactly free. Especially if you
| go unannounced
| ahtihn wrote:
| That depends on the country and bank. I can withdraw any
| amount of money for free.
| merinofg wrote:
| He is not. In Spain, for instance, it is already illegal to
| pay with cash costs above 1.000EUR in any commerce. You are
| forced to buy it using a credit/debit card.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| Spain is in the EU, but Spain is not the EU.
|
| So he is.
|
| But then again, what's the practical reason to pay more
| than 1k cash?
| pfortuny wrote:
| I do not want the government or the bank to know that I
| am buying a motorbike, a car, a washing machine or ten
| dozen frying pans.
|
| Just that.
|
| If the bank knows, the government does.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Depending on where you live, if the bank knows, a large
| of parties from the public and private sector knows.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _more than 1k cash_
|
| High end electronic equipment, for example.
|
| Or do you by personal devices linking them to your name?
| cypress66 wrote:
| Because the opposite (banks) means the government can
| freeze your funds, like they did in Canada to protesters.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| > Can you name one practical reason to pay more than 10k
| cash?
|
| Have you ever bought a used car? Or played relatively high
| limit at a casino?
|
| It's perfectly normal to take 6 figures cash to a casino if
| you're playing high stakes poker, for example.
|
| And there are plenty of other reasons.
| namdnay wrote:
| > Have you ever bought a used car?
|
| A cashiers check costs what? 10, 20 euros?
|
| And we're talking about how it can impact real people here,
| not the 0.1% who gamble 10 years' minimum wage at the
| casino in one evening
| sgjohnson wrote:
| > A cashiers check costs what? 10, 20 euros?
|
| Virtually nobody in Europe uses checks (in my country
| they are explicitly banned as a tender). It's either cash
| or a bank transfer, and for such purchases, most people
| really prefer cash.
|
| > And we're talking about how it can impact real people
| here, not the 0.1% who gamble 10 years' minimum wage at
| the casino in one evening
|
| Most professional poker players are staked. They aren't
| gambling with their money. It's a job. A high risk, high
| reward job, but still a job. And it was just an example,
| and a perfectly valid at that.
| mcv wrote:
| They want privacy for regular people, accountability for the
| rich and powerful.
| coldtea wrote:
| Muahahahaha! They are one with the rich and powerful...
| roenxi wrote:
| That is a lot like asking for a form of secure end-to-end
| encryption which law enforcement can monitor server-side.
|
| If a government can differentiate between a regular person
| and someone rich and powerful, neither of them have any
| privacy. There has to be invasive monitoring of the regular
| person to ensure they aren't stealthily becoming rich.
| mcv wrote:
| I don't see how it is. This isn't about differentiating
| between rich and poor, nor about monitoring people becoming
| rich. It's about making sure that the kind of transaction
| that no normal person would ever do in cash, cannot be done
| in cash. It targets rich crooks not by identifying them,
| but by targeting the kind of transaction that only they
| would ever do.
| sealeck wrote:
| No it really is not. E2E encryption requires this property
| because everything happens over a channel which everyone
| (or, a lot of people) can listen into and the protocol is
| not really based on trust. Meanwhile the financial system
| is entirely based on trust (between individuals, banks,
| individuals and institutions, etc) and people have to place
| their trust in someone at some point (even very rich people
| doing very dodgy things with their assets have to trust
| their bankers at e.g. - perhaps somewhat unwisely - Credit
| Suisse et al.)
|
| The cryptocurrency crowd would like to avoid having to
| trust anyone ever (but, well, if you look at the systems
| they design, they're very centralised and rely on networks
| of trust between lots of people; even within the supposedly
| iron-clad set of technical rules it's impossible to encode
| reality, hardly surprising that it's impossible to even
| encode mathematics in a set of logical rules).
|
| The thing that we're missing is that (at least in my
| opinion) the reason privacy is important to people is that
| it is a necessary condition for expressing their
| personality; ability to buy a sex toy without anyone else
| knowing about it - sure? Same thing about e.g. visiting a
| gay club and buying a drink if you live in a very
| (conservative) Christian community. Ability to move a
| billion dollars into an offshore jurisdiction to avoid
| paying on tax on it? I personally wouldn't say this is
| integral to the right to self-expression.
|
| > If a government can differentiate between a regular
| person and someone rich and powerful, neither of them have
| any privacy. There has to be invasive monitoring of the
| regular person to ensure they aren't stealthily becoming
| rich.
|
| This is not really true; you don't have to start with the
| person and locate all their assets. Instead you start with
| the _assets_ and locate the people who own them (e.g. you
| see a mystery yacht, and you try to trace the owner).
| motohagiography wrote:
| UK/CAN/AU/NZ are next.
| rahen wrote:
| This new EU regulation has nothing to do with preventing
| terrorism or money laundering, but rather paving the way for its
| CBDC. This is about power and surveillance.
| tonis2 wrote:
| Yep,thugs will use crypto, but EU can force their will on
| people wallets easier.
| rahen wrote:
| Thugs use cash, not cryptos.
|
| https://finance.yahoo.com/news/only-0-15-total-
| crypto-174206...
|
| The share of illicit activities for cash is around ~5%, 33x
| more than cryptos.
| seydor wrote:
| Many countries already have much Lower limits
| m00dy wrote:
| I think another important thing to mention is that there is a
| regulation on centralized crypto exchanges about unhosted
| wallets. Therefore, this regulation is completely against defi I
| would say.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| The article is pretty vague about CASPs and unhosted wallets.
| Do you know the nature of the regulatory change?
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| Let's stop saying 'unhosted wallets'. Those are exchange
| accounts, the contents of which you have access too solely by
| the mercy of the exchange.
| m00dy wrote:
| yes you are right. It has a negative implicit meaning...These
| wallets are the future!!!
| eddsh1994 wrote:
| I know someone in England who paid for their houses construction
| by going to an ATM and maxing out the cash withdrawal per card,
| putting the cash in a bin bag, and giving it to the builders on a
| daily basis. I don't believe it'd be realistically possible to
| stop this from occurring.
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| "Structuring"
| Teandw wrote:
| Your friend is lying to you. If you do this enough times, the
| bank automatically flags the account for money laundering. It's
| very basic and standard money laundering procedures.
|
| "I don't believe it'd be realistically possible to stop this
| from occurring." - It already happens and is already stopped so
| you're wrong on that one.
| eddsh1994 wrote:
| I know for a fact this happened and it was 2006/7 so nothing
| happened
| SnowHill9902 wrote:
| 1/ he never said his friend's account was not flagged. It may
| take some time. 2/ his cash was already clean, so it's not
| part of money laundering, if anything it's called
| criminal/terrorism funding.
| vaidhy wrote:
| You can be abetting someone to evade tax. If you do it
| knowingly, you might also be culpable.
| Teandw wrote:
| There is no such thing as "already clean" money from a
| banks perspective. Money in a bank is constantly and always
| monitored as if it's potentially dirty.
| elorant wrote:
| How is it money laundering when the money is already in the
| bank and thus accounted for?
| Teandw wrote:
| Being flagged for money laundering and it actually being
| money laundering are two different things.
|
| Obviously it would then lead to them asking why he was
| choosing to pay the builder in such a manner, rather than
| just doing a bank transfer. Ultimately could lead into an
| investigation of some sort.
| [deleted]
| jahnu wrote:
| You don't think an algorithm can flag up a person for an audit?
| eddsh1994 wrote:
| And what happens then? You're legally paying someone - it's
| their job to report it appropriately.
| ynniv wrote:
| Repeatedly taking out the daily limit seems like it would
| attract some additional attention.
| Strom wrote:
| Can someone explain to me how this 10K EUR limit can be enforced?
| What will stop the launderer from selling an item/service valued
| at 1K to a thousand anonymous customers who paid with cash?
| Surely they're not going to demand KYC for every tiny cash
| transaction? If they aren't, I can't see a limit to the number of
| fake customers you can come up with.
|
| Or is this just meant for cases where the business is already
| under 24/7 survailance and they could point to not enough people
| coming by?
| lultimouomo wrote:
| It prevents people with lots of dirty money from paying
| expensive-but-unregistered-goods (i.e. not cars and houses)
| with cash from law abiding citizen; if they want the expensive
| stuff, they'll have to either find some other dishonest
| businessman to sell it to them (might be hard, depending on
| what you're buying, and increases the risk of being caught) or
| deposit the money in a bank to pay for it electronically (which
| will raise flags since you are not officially earning that
| money)
| Strom wrote:
| I think you raise a good point. In an ideal world this would
| mean that only more sophisticated criminals with access to
| money laundering would be able to use large amounts. An
| unsophisticated criminal can't just buy stuff from a law
| abiding citizen.
|
| Remains to be seen how this will work out in practice. My
| guess is that most law abiding citizens won't even know that
| such a law exists. Your point still stands though.
| Teandw wrote:
| You open a bank account and start "selling an item/service
| valued at 1K to a thousand anonymous customers who paid with
| cash" and you'll come up against KYC and have your account
| flagged regardless.
|
| That's what would be stopping you; existing anti-money
| laundering systems.
|
| This is then how things like this are enforced.
| grishka wrote:
| But that implies that you're using the bank system in the
| first place. What if you don't?
| Teandw wrote:
| If you're moving that much money around at some point that
| money has to flow into a legally operated financial
| provider/service for you to use it for any good means.
|
| You could launder $100k through the means you mentioned
| with Bitcoin through illegally operated exchanges for
| example but then what? You can't use it to buy a property
| that way.
| grishka wrote:
| > You can't use it to buy a property that way.
|
| Do people in other parts of the world use bank transfers
| to buy property or what? I'm genuinely curious. Where I'm
| from it's often a cash transaction, unless it's a
| mortgage.
| Strom wrote:
| You mean a bank will demand to know information about the
| customers of a business that has an account with them?
|
| I personally already run a business and my bank has never
| wanted any info from me about my business's customers. Sure
| they know _me_ well, but not my customers.
|
| Are you saying this is an exception?
| sofixa wrote:
| The bank reports your bank transactions to the tax
| authority, who compare them with your tax returns. If there
| are significant discrepancies you'll probably get asked
| questions about your customers.
| Strom wrote:
| Well in Estonia (an EU state) this certainly doesn't
| happen with any regularity. The tax authority has the
| possibility to ask for bank statements, but they are
| required by law to inform the account holder of this
| check up. It only happens for cases where you're already
| under a tax authority investigation.
|
| I know though that this is the case in more government-
| happy states like Denmark, where the banks send this data
| more liberally.
|
| Anyway even if all the data would go automatically to the
| tax authority, that doesn't reveal anything. The company
| would be paying tax properly on all of this, that's the
| whole idea of laundering. To get the money into the legal
| system.
| Teandw wrote:
| What happens when you limit the amount that can be made
| in a singular cash transaction, is that you then severely
| limit what businesses that you can use to launder it
| through.
|
| If you can pay $100k in cash for a gold bar, it only
| takes 20 transactions to launder $2 mill. That's not all
| that suspicious.
|
| With this new limit, you've now turned that into 200
| transactions needed. Now the business stands out more
| because they tend to use business averages/data to spot
| things.
| Teandw wrote:
| It's already done without you being involved. Governments
| know who's transacted with you already as the banks tell
| them.
| pelorat wrote:
| No one, but it would be against the law?
| Strom wrote:
| Money laundering was already against the law. The whole
| premise of this 10K limit is that it will somehow stop money
| laundering. The way I see it, at best it creates some hassle.
| Teandw wrote:
| The hassle is quite important as 1) It limits the business
| models it can be done through and 2) It means the business
| models you can still launder it through are much more
| noticeable.
|
| It's easy to launder $2 million selling gold bars. It's
| much harder to launder $2 million through a car wash
| without red flags showing.
| himinlomax wrote:
| > Can someone explain to me how this 10K EUR limit can be
| enforced?
|
| Same way the law about having the correct plate on your car is.
| Nobody's stopping you, but if you're caught, you go to jail
| and/or get a fine.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| You don't own the cash in your pocket
| tgv wrote:
| If you can't explain where it comes from. Otherwise, it's yours
| to do with as you please.
| pigsty wrote:
| Why should anyone have to prove what's in their pocket is
| theirs? Why not have police question people for wearing shoes
| that are a little too nice or seize expensive watches?
| kvdveer wrote:
| Police actually does that here NL). If you declare hardly
| any income or posessions on your tax report, yet you drive
| some very expensive car, you may expect a visit from some
| fraud investigation unit.
|
| This has proven very effective against organised crime.
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| They must be front line street thugs or something - any
| wise guy worth his weight is going to declare enough
| income to keep the tax authorities off his back. The rest
| goes into a safety deposit box someplace distant, or gets
| commingled into a business someplace. Escobar owned a cab
| company which he claimed was the source of his income -
| he even had a couple guys who would drive around picking
| up and dropping off passengers. In modern drug cartels
| everyone is a lottery winner - they will pay people full
| value to sign over lottery winnings to them just so they
| can report it as their source of income.
| [deleted]
| tgv wrote:
| Crime. Not that difficult, is it?
| pigsty wrote:
| I literally have the equivalent of $1500 in my wallet
| right now. Why? Because I withdrew it and might end up
| buying something with it, either in one big purchase or
| ration it throughout the month.
|
| Any country that considers that a crime or potentially a
| crime is dystopian. It's insane that people think what
| was the typical way to pay for things a few years ago
| (and still is in the free world) is some vile action
| worthy of suspicion.
| wizeman wrote:
| > I literally have the equivalent of $1500 in my wallet
| right now.
|
| > Any country that considers that a crime or potentially
| a crime is dystopian.
|
| Then Spain and Greece meet your definition of being
| dystopian, as their cash payment limits are 1,000 EUR and
| 500 EUR respectively.
|
| And I agree with you.
| [deleted]
| jeltz wrote:
| Yeah, I am a bit worried that we may be too harsh but
| these laws combat real issues in our society.
| wizeman wrote:
| > Yeah, I am a bit worried that we may be too harsh but
| these laws combat real issues in our society.
|
| Well, there are many other ways to combat these issues
| without treating innocent citizens as criminals unless
| they prove they are innocent.
|
| Believe me, I've been on the receiving end of these laws
| despite never having done anything illegal, which means
| that my financial privacy has now been ruined several
| times and as a consequence, my security and safety and
| that of my family is now at risk, forever.
| jeltz wrote:
| To fight organized crime by making life harder for career
| criminals. And yes they can and do question things which
| are not cash, especially expensive cars.
| wizeman wrote:
| > Why not have police question people for wearing shoes
| that are a little too nice or seize expensive watches?
|
| Please, don't give them more ideas.
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| ah yes, civil asset forfeiture is now a _And That 's A Good
| Thing, Here's Why_
| flandish wrote:
| Get the boot out of your mouth. If cash is legal tender, then
| any amount is, by default, legal.
|
| This law makes it not fully legal tender (after amount X). It
| is disgusting.
|
| Stop pretending the government (any) has the "average" man's
| best interest. Stop pretending they care.
| mfuzzey wrote:
| >Stop pretending the government (any) has the "average"
| man's best interest
|
| "Average" people don't pay >10kEUR in cash. So this measure
| won't hurt average people and may stop some money
| launderers / frauders so no issue with it.
|
| And actually most EU countries already have lower limits.
| flandish wrote:
| You're kidding, right? Average people buy cars with cash:
| a teen saving from first jobs for a first used car...
| eventually, "10k" will be where "teen" used cars land ...
| and boom, average person.
|
| A person with a down payment on a house.
|
| ...I can go on.
|
| The point is this: casting this wide a net in the name of
| "fighting terrorists" is absolute nonsense, and not worth
| what would happen to a terrorist in this net: a few extra
| "10k money limit" charges... compared to the literal
| thousands of people this will inconvenience.
|
| Anything a nation does in the name of fighting an enemy
| that is, in essence, a version of Lacan's "objet petit a"
| - is a nation lying to its people.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Average Europeans use bank transfers or debit cards to
| make these payments.
| tgv wrote:
| That's not what legal tender means, and the expression
| "boot out of your mouth" is a new one to me. Perhaps you
| meant the more derogatory "foot out of your mouth"?
| tom_ wrote:
| I assumed it would be to do with this: https://www.urband
| ictionary.com/define.php?term=Bootlicker - as in, you are
| being criticised for apparently siding with people that
| you should more correctly see as your oppressors.
|
| It is always possible I have misunderstood the point too.
| flandish wrote:
| Your understanding of the phrase as linked is exactly how
| I meant it.
| alkonaut wrote:
| > Get the boot out of your mouth. If cash is legal tender,
| then any amount is, by default, legal.
|
| The concept of what is and isn't "legal tender" is pretty
| extreme in the US compared to many other places. E.g many
| (most?) countries routinely takes bank notes out of
| circulation and make them worthless. But this isn't so much
| about whether is legal tender but more about KYC laws: your
| EUR20K is no good to me as payment for a car if my bank
| won't accept it in a deposit without a lot of hassle.
|
| > Stop pretending the government (any) has the "average"
| man's best interest
|
| I like my government. I believe it operates with the best
| interest of the majority in mind. Why would they not? I
| elected them? It doesn't consist of shadowy bureaucrats
| with hard- to-decide motives as far as I can see. They
| usually make laws with public support and have to answer
| when making impopular laws. The whole "governments are
| universally bad" thing is sad. Are people accepting living
| in democracies they experience working so poorly that they
| believe government has its own - or worse someone else's -
| best interest in mind.
| wizeman wrote:
| > I like my government. I believe it operates with the
| best interest of the majority in mind.
|
| Yeah, I used to believe that too.
|
| > Are people accepting living in democracies they
| experience working so poorly that they believe government
| has its own - or worse someone else's - best interest in
| mind.
|
| Yes, unfortunately. And that's something people learn to
| accept because 1) most people are not aware that
| governments could work better, and 2) even if they know
| governments could work better, it's not clear to them how
| to achieve that, and 3) even when there are governments
| that already work better, it's not easy to move to
| another country, be it due to friends, family, lack of
| jobs in your expertise, language barriers, cultural
| barriers, different climate, strict immigration policies,
| etc.
|
| And even when you can move to another country, many
| countries still have most of the same underlying problems
| with government, because even when there is genuine
| interest in solving the problems (which is rare), their
| root causes are never actually solved (or at least, not
| effectively).
| flandish wrote:
| Adding: most "democracies" are not truly democratic -
| representative governments are, "proxy" or "hopeful" or
| "you promised!" democratic but not democratic.
|
| Add in the layers of "manufactured consent" and you
| get... this to help "fight" "terrorism."
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > If cash is legal tender, then any amount is, by default,
| legal.
|
| Cash being "legal tender" means that, if someone sues you
| and wins a judgment, you're entitled to pay the judgment in
| cash.
|
| It doesn't mean that anyone willing to exchange a service
| or item for any random service or item is also compelled to
| exchange their thing for cash. If they demand a live sheep,
| you'll give them a live sheep or do without whatever
| they're offering.
| flandish wrote:
| Nobody is talking about being compelled to accept cash -
| we are talking about cash being used in a manner that is,
| arbitrarily illegal after a certain amount.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| What were you saying "If cash is legal tender, then any
| amount is, by default, legal" meant? The only meaning of
| "legal tender" is that someone with a court judgment
| against you can be compelled to accept legal tender. It
| doesn't say anything about whether it's legal for you to
| use it in other transactions.
| flandish wrote:
| " Legal tender is anything recognized by law as a means
| to settle a public or private debt or meet a financial
| obligation, including tax payments, contracts, and legal
| fines or damages. The national currency is legal tender
| in practically every country. "
| https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/legal-tender.asp
|
| I'm sorry my use of the word "legal" in the context of
| "legally acceptable tender" triggered this response.
| You'll have to forgive me: English is my first language.
|
| I will try again:
|
| The use of cash, _if agreed upon by parties involved_ ,
| is legal because it's a government "backed"/"accepted"
| item of currency. _Tendering_ cash in this transaction is
| legal. (You're not trading a car for $value in meth or
| guns..)
|
| A gov is now saying, no matter how legal the use of cash
| is, after a certain amount it is no longer legal.
|
| This is, in my opinion and with my beliefs, an overreach
| and quite frankly nonsense. It is no surprise, but
| saddening all the same. That is all.
| tbillington wrote:
| burden of proof?
| alkonaut wrote:
| You'll need to explain where large amounts of cash comes
| from when depositing, or what it's for when withdrawing. So
| in a way the burden is on whoever wants to use large
| amounts of cash.
| cdot2 wrote:
| Wouldnt that be a guilty until proven innocent system?
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Meanwhile money laundering through slot machines, hairdressers,
| car washes and other low transaction value covers remain entirely
| unaffected.
| Teandw wrote:
| You've been watching too many movies and TV programmes.
|
| Things like using car washes to launder money are pretty much a
| dead thing because it's one of the worst ways to do it.
| amelius wrote:
| Unless you offer a $100K cleaning program.
| seppel wrote:
| This is (from the perspective of the state) good money
| laundering, because you pay taxes on it.
| eastbound wrote:
| IRS is ok with that because tax is paid. It wouldn't bring any
| technical value to arrest those people; It would just reduce
| corruption. Ironically.
| [deleted]
| vl wrote:
| But also there is just so much that can be laundered through
| such businesses and each of them requires hands-on management.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| what's your solution?
|
| ban hairdressers and car washes?
| pelorat wrote:
| This will affect maybe 0.001% of the population. No one drops a
| stack of 10K euro when they buy something, it just doesn't
| happen.
| colechristensen wrote:
| I bought a van for $11k in cash once.
| coldtea wrote:
| Actually the 0.0001% will have absolutely no problem. They
| usually don't even own much to their own name.
|
| This is among the measures intended for the 99%
| i_have_an_idea wrote:
| Until 2019, the 500 euro note was issued. It is still legal
| tender, so 10K euro is just 20 notes.
| dahfizz wrote:
| This new rule bans transactions over 10k, but it also places
| restrictions on transactions as small as 1k euro.
|
| And of course, once these rules are in place, they can lower
| the limit over time. Boiling the frog and all that.
| ilammy wrote:
| You don't need to lower the limit. Just wait for inflation to
| do its thing. No new legislation or public debate necessary.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Whenever someone introduces new restrictions to freedoms, there
| is always someone who says, 'relax, it will affect only few
| people'. Rinse and repeat, and this way, piece by piece, all
| your freedoms will be taken away.
|
| Remember: Government is not your friend. It needs to be kept in
| check. Financial freedoms, untraceable transactions, etc help
| keep government in check. Yes, it allows crime. But guess what,
| when government has way too much power, _opposing it becomes a
| crime_.
| manscrober wrote:
| I agree with the sentiment in this case, and I do think 10k
| is ridiculously low for this restriction and the premise of
| this helping money laundering doesn't sound very convincing
| to me. But this strawman is IMO the weakest possible argument
| against the whole "this affects no-one" idea.
|
| I think the more convincing points are 1) it does actually
| affect many people within specific groups, e.g. business
| owners 2) there is no alternative that comes anywhere near
| the features of cash, especially reliability and acceptance
| combined with instantaneous transfer. I think history gives
| enough reason to mistrust banks in times of financial crisis,
| and I literally cannot reliably pay for anything without a
| card from a bank or credit institute - or cash.
|
| there are more points mentioned in the comments here on HN
| but I realized I started rambling so I'll just stop here
| Havoc wrote:
| This one kinda makes sense to me. Can't really think of any good
| legitimate use cases for large amounts of cash.
|
| Closest I can think of say a bar or something similarly cash
| heavy getting cash and paying suppliers directly. (which is in
| itself problematic @ tax)
| shakow wrote:
| > Can't really think of any good legitimate use cases for large
| amounts of cash.
|
| Buying a car?
| alkonaut wrote:
| I can't imagine a car dealer who would do anything but laugh
| if I bought a car north of EUR10k and suggested I wanted to
| pay in cash. I'm 100% sure they'd rather not sell the car at
| all. Same if I privately sold a car that expensive and the
| buyer showed up with cash. The hassle involved with
| depositing and withdrawing large amounts of cash due to KYC
| laws already makes this a no go. And for good reason imo.
| EthicalSimilar wrote:
| I purchased a car that exceeded that value, in cash. The
| seller actually worked for a bank's fraud department.
|
| I didn't do it because I store a lot of cash in hand but
| rather because it was a PITA to move large amounts of money
| with the bank that I was using. The bank wouldn't even
| authorise me to transact more than EUR10k a day via a bank
| transfer.
|
| It took me a good few hours in the bank - on calls to many
| departments - just to get access to my money.
|
| I've since moved to one of the newer challenger banks and
| it has been the best decision I've made.
| Canada wrote:
| > can't imagine a car dealer who would do anything but
| laugh if I bought a car north of EUR10k and suggested I
| wanted to pay in cash.
|
| Doesn't sound like how any car salesman, or any commission
| salesman I've ever met thinks.
|
| Car ownership is registered with government anyway, so it's
| not as if anyone can get away with pretending to be poor
| and owning a bunch of fancy cars anyway.
|
| In my personal experience cash is how used car sales are
| done between individuals. There is sales tax on used car
| sales where I'm from. When the sale is agreed the seller
| and the buyer go to the registry. Say I'm selling you my
| car for 20k. You don't own the car until I sign ownership
| to you. I don't get any money until you hand me the cash.
| So safe thing to do is seller requires buyer to hand cash
| over and count it in front of the goverment agent. Buyer
| would prefer seller lie and understate sale price, but
| seller has no incentive to do that unless buyer gives that
| cash upfront. Buyer risks seller just saying "nah" and
| walking away with that cash. So it either requires trust,
| in which case no scheme the government comes up with can
| stop us anyway, or one party takes a serious risk, which
| there is strong disincentive to do.
|
| Car has book value government agent knows anyway. Also,
| goverment exempts tax when seller and buyer are related.
| Government: "lol, you have trust, our despicable cash grab
| will not work here anyway so let's not bother"
|
| So who cares here? Most big ticket property (eg. Real
| estate) works like this.
|
| Some things like jewlery can slide through, but without
| receipts is risky crossing borders, which puts a serious
| damper status/utility of it, and those industries already
| get higher scruitiny anyway. And anyway, is it worth giving
| up our liberty over some tax revenue related to stuff like
| this?
|
| So why prevent cash payments? The only purpose it serves it
| to keep the everyman under total control and open him to
| even more theft of savings via negative interest rates or
| transaction fees by financial middlemen.
|
| Criminalizing cash is totalatarian in my view.
| lol768 wrote:
| > I don't get any money until you hand me the cash.
|
| Just do a bank transfer to the individual you're buying
| the car off. Unless you live in a country with incredibly
| poor payments infrastructure, the funds will be available
| instantly.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| "You can't buy a car without permission" sounds tyrannical
| to me.
| Canada wrote:
| That ship has sailed long ago. I don't know any place
| where car ownership is not a government registry, and
| that is surely because the theft of them was so common
| that something had to be done about it. Correct me if I'm
| wrong.
| sofixa wrote:
| Then you have no idea what tyrannical means in practical
| means and are just gasping at straws.
|
| It's not a matter of permission, nor is having a car a
| need or a right. Do you also find needing permission (a
| driver's license) to drive a car tyrannical?
| alkonaut wrote:
| Well there is no law forcing a salesperson to accept
| cash. So the permission here has little to do with the
| government.
|
| He is no more required to accept my bag of cash as
| payment than he is my vintage guitar. And while the value
| might be there, both are a massive hassle for the seller,
| so they'd simply refuse most likely.
| hayd wrote:
| If that's the case then there's no need for this
| regulation.
| alkonaut wrote:
| I don't see how that's related. It's one thing to
| regulate who must and must not accept cash. E.g it's in
| the interest of society to mandate important functions
| such as buying food is always possible with cash.
|
| The law in the article is about a size limit for cash
| transactions when cash _is_ accepted. It doesn't have
| anything to do with who will or must accept cash. Only
| that _if_ they do, there is a limit.
| wizeman wrote:
| > E.g it's in the interest of society to mandate
| important functions such as buying food is always
| possible with cash.
|
| And buying a car is not important?
|
| > Only that if they do, there is a limit.
|
| And this limit is below the value of most cars.
|
| Which is what we were discussing in this thread.
| 9dev wrote:
| We're talking about Europe. Owning a car is a quality of
| life feature, not a requirement here. Food, on the other
| hand, is a necessity.
| alkonaut wrote:
| In terms of resilience to wars, disasters, power outages
| and similar (which is one of two arguments for cash the
| other being privacy), I think the key functions are
| probably food, fuel and similar. That car sales can
| continue is probably not as important.
|
| That's why Starbucks can probably get away with rejecting
| cash in Sweden but a large grocery chain probably can't
| and won't.
| hayd wrote:
| You say people won't accept 10k+ cash payments but
| nevertheless such payments should be banned. Why? if no-
| one would accept them anyway.
|
| Whether people accept large cash payments should be
| entirely up to them.
|
| > E.g it's in the interest of society to mandate
| important functions such as buying food is always
| possible with cash.
|
| Give it ten years.
| skissane wrote:
| > He is no more required to accept my bag of cash
|
| Sometimes, the bank won't accept your bag of cash.
|
| One time I was in a bank branch sorting out some matter,
| and I overheard a conversation between the bank staff and
| another customer. The customer had a bag containing $100K
| in cash, and wanted to deposit it into their account. The
| bank staff were on the phone to the bank's security
| office, asking for permission to accept it. They said
| their cash security policy limited how much cash they
| were allowed to have on premises at any time, accepting
| this deposit would put them over that limit, so they had
| to get approval to exceed it before they could do so. You
| could tell from the tone the staff used, they didn't
| appreciate this customer's behaviour
|
| Another time, my wife went to the bank branch, because
| her grandfather had sent our son $50 cash for his
| birthday, and she wanted to put it in his bank account.
| She stood in line for ages, only to then be told "I'm
| sorry we can't accept any more cash deposits, someone
| just made a big one and now we are at the limit of cash
| we are allowed to hold in the branch". My wife objected
| it was only $50, but the bank staff said "sorry, rules
| are rules". I told her in the future, one of us should
| just transfer the equivalent money into his bank account
| from our own, and then keep the cash for ourselves
| alkonaut wrote:
| > Sometimes, the bank won't accept your bag of cash
|
| Cash limits aside, They at least have legal requirements
| to know their customers and not blindly accept cash
| without any idea where it came from.
|
| Edit: this isn't an opinion this is a simple statement of
| fact.
| skissane wrote:
| True. Although, from the government's point of view,
| surely it would be better for the bank to accept a $100K
| deposit of dirty money and then immediately freeze it,
| than refuse the dirty deposit and the customer walks out
| with it and the government might never see it again
|
| I suspect the people who actually try to deposit $100K in
| cash at a bank are probably not criminals/etc, they are
| just people with "more money than sense". People with
| something to hide will try to avoid drawing attention to
| their activities, but turning up at a bank branch with
| that amount of cash attracts a lot of attention. And the
| criminals who are actually dumb enough to do that kind of
| thing get caught very quickly
| wizeman wrote:
| > And while the value might be there, both are a massive
| hassle for the seller, so they'd simply refuse most
| likely.
|
| And the "hassle" is not actually accepting cash, as
| that's the least of the problems. It's dealing with the
| risk and consequences of doing business with someone the
| government doesn't approve of and then getting in trouble
| for it (even though the car business has nothing to do
| with that person).
|
| You're arguing like if the salesperson is not accepting
| cash out of their own free will. But you know that's not
| true.
|
| Think of this as being similar to the situation where the
| mafia was keeping tabs on your car business and you
| decided to do business in a way they did not approve of.
| What do you think would happen? Would you say the car
| business isn't being forced to do business in a certain
| way in this situation?
| alkonaut wrote:
| > You're arguing like if the salesperson is not accepting
| cash out of their own free will. But you know that's not
| true.
|
| Whose fault is it? I mean they literally don't and as far
| as I know this is because is insecure and expensive. A
| bag of cash is an expensive liability. They'd prefer I
| deposited the money and transfered it to them instead.
| Most restaurants and cafes don't accept cash either
| although they are certainly free to do so. But it's more
| convenient to just put up a sign saying "no cash" and you
| have magically cut your cash handling costs to zero and
| your robbery risk significantly.
| wizeman wrote:
| > Whose fault is it? I mean they literally don't and as
| far as I know this is because is insecure and expensive.
|
| "Under AML regulations, anyone involved in vehicle sales
| can face significant fines and even criminal prosecution
| if they fail to detect money laundering. This includes
| law firms, banks as well as vehicle dealers--who can be
| any individual or business that trades vehicles or acts
| as an intermediary in their purchase or sale" [1]
|
| > A bag of cash is an expensive liability.
|
| Not as much of a liability as not selling the car.
| Unless, of course, the government is threatening to put
| you in jail, then yes, it's an expensive liability.
|
| > Most restaurants and cafes don't accept cash either
| although they are certainly free to do so.
|
| Wait, what? They don't? I've never been to such a
| restaurant or cafe... and I've been to dozens of
| countries. I've been in a few restaurants/cafes that
| don't accept credit cards, that's for sure (mostly
| because of the fees I suppose). I wonder what's going on
| where you live.
|
| > But it's more convenient to just put up a sign saying
| "no cash" and you have magically cut your cash handling
| costs to zero and your robbery risk significantly.
|
| Perhaps you should consider living in an area with a
| lower risk of robbery and/or more effective police?
|
| What you are saying here is not a problem in most of the
| world. And it has nothing to do with the new law we are
| talking about.
|
| [1] https://sumsub.com/blog/money-laundering-vehicles/
| alkonaut wrote:
| This is in Sweden. Cash is mostly gone. Restaurants where
| you eat first and pay later usually accept it
| reluctantly, unless they made clear up front they don't
| (they have no choice then - you already ate and unlike
| the opposite no-card-situation where you are forced to go
| to an atm, you can hardly go make a deposit!). But
| stores, cafes etc are cashless to a large extent (but
| with lots of exceptions or partial exceptions e.g a
| grocery store might have 1 register of 10 accepting cash
| which means you don't want to use cash).
|
| Overall, the vast majority of retailers do accept cash in
| some form but not in usual "small transaction" situations
| like cafes, taxis, smaller shops.
| Canada wrote:
| > Whose fault is it? I mean they literally don't and as
| far as I know this is because is insecure and expensive.
|
| That is utterly ridiculous in the case of a car. If that
| was any concern whatsoever, then the dealer would say
| "let me drive you to my bank" and accept/deposit it
| there, which is a very, very common practice when seller
| is concerned with authenticity of the notes.
|
| It's not an option in low value transactions like
| restaurant bills but then the risk there is low.
|
| I know there are some places that choose not to accept
| cash payments to avoid cash accounting risk. That's cool,
| their choice I walk away... without paying them if they
| didn't disclose no cash policy clearly up front.
| wizeman wrote:
| > Most restaurants and cafes don't accept cash either
| although they are certainly free to do so.
|
| Ok, so I'm curious about this place where you live where
| most restaurants don't accept cash, so here's a question:
|
| Let's say you enter the restaurant, eat the food and now
| you owe payment, but you don't have a credit card (maybe
| you didn't notice the "no cash" sign).
|
| Legal tender laws say that cash must be accepted as
| payment for all debts. So how can the restaurant refuse
| the cash?
|
| That only seems to be legal if the customer prepays for
| the food, which is not what happens in most restaurants
| (fast food restaurants notwithstanding).
|
| Is there a special exemption for restaurants where you
| live, or you don't have legal tender laws, or what's
| going on here?
| alkonaut wrote:
| > Ok, so I'm curious about this place where you live
| where most restaurants don't accept cash
|
| This is in Sweden.
|
| > Legal tender laws say that cash must be accepted as
| payment for all debts.
|
| Yes. But those apparently aren't absolute and non-
| negotiable. The Riksbank is actually concerned about
| this, because it's affecting the ability for the economy
| to function in a crisis, as well as the ability to make
| anonymous transactions, so there might be changes to this
| coming.
|
| (In English:) https://www.riksbank.se/en-gb/payments--
| cash/payments-in-swe...
|
| But basically today no, there is nothing forcing any
| business to accept cash today. And as cash use dwindled,
| the cost of cash handling ballooned to the point where
| it's worth swallowing the card fees over paying for cash
| management. There is also a very widespread cell phone
| transfer system both for free instant transfers between
| individuals and for payments. So it's a widely accepted
| convenience. Cash is one of those systems now that
| everyone agrees should remain for privacy and resilience
| reasons but few are ready to use it. Forcing everyone to
| accept cash would mean having lots of cash handling
| expenses (cash registers etc) but still likely almost no
| cash in circulation. It's part of the reason the riksbank
| is eying a CDBC with privacy features.
|
| And yes if you travel to Sweden and order a meal at a
| restaurant you'll probably always get away with cash if
| that is all you have (that is - they'd sort it out but in
| certain places it might be a bit awkward). But if you
| asked first they might say they "prefer card". But pre-
| paid situations (e.g ordering a coffee to go) will often
| show a no cash sign. The opposite is always true, you'll
| never _need_ cash. If you take a taxi it's card only,
| nearly no transactions between individuals (used goods,
| babysitter, beggar(!)...) are cash either.
|
| In total though, the death of cash isn't that widespread
| 8-9 of 10 retailers still accepts cash. It's mostly in
| smaller shops, cafes and similar services you don't see
| it (and taxi have been cash free for more than a decade).
| (In Swedish)
| https://via.tt.se/pressmeddelande/9-av-10-svenska-
| handlare-t...
|
| However, that a retailer accepts cash doesn't mean it's
| convenient to use. For example in a large grocery store a
| small number of checkouts might accept cash meaning
| you'll be waiting in line to pay with cash - so few will.
| nottorp wrote:
| > This is in Sweden.
|
| Does Sweden accept Visa/MC or they have some weird local
| card in most places?
|
| Just checking in case i ever play the tourist in Sweden.
| Had trouble in NL.
| Canada wrote:
| > Ok, so I'm curious about this place where you live
| where most restaurants don't accept cash
|
| I've encountered this from the Bay Area to Bangkok. It's
| a thing. That bar, or that Starbucks or whatever is card
| only/electronic payment only.
| mr_mitm wrote:
| Car dealers are not the only people selling cars. Anybody
| who owns a car may want to sell it, and using a credit card
| is not an option for most private sellers. I can see why
| the 10k limit makes sense, but it would be dishonest to
| claim that it won't make private car selling a bit more
| complicated than it was. Escrow services will now probably
| pop up to facilitate private car sales, but it may be worth
| it.
| alkonaut wrote:
| I'd never ever use cash for a private sale - of anything
| -- either regardless of whether it was $100 or $100k. For
| a large number like $10k, bank transfers work well. For
| smaller numbers, instant transfers are cheap and nearly
| 100% of people use them here (and importantly the _same_
| service - so I know I can instantly transfer $2 to anyone
| at any time for free).
|
| When I place an ad to sell a used something for EUR50 I
| don't expect to get cash for it and the seller probably
| isn't expecting me to accept cash as payment either.
|
| I haven't used a banknote for probably 10 years now. I
| haven't even _seen_ most of the banknotes in circulation
| here. This isn't all positive (for privacy and resilience
| in a crisis), and the fact that I wouldn't doesn't change
| the equally important fact that I want to be _able_ to do
| it. And that ability is of course in peril here. But it
| doesn explain the situation quite well wrt to what the
| real impact of laws like this would be.
| skissane wrote:
| > Anybody who owns a car may want to sell it, and using a
| credit card is not an option for most private sellers
|
| Most people use bank transfers for this kind of stuff.
| The seller gives you their bank account number and you
| put the money in it. I recently bought a new car from a
| dealer, and I paid my transferring money to the dealer's
| bank account. The dealer took credit card for the initial
| $1000 deposit but not for the full amount - avoids all
| those merchant fees on the full amount.
|
| Here in Australia, you can now attach your phone number
| to your bank account (called "PayID"), so the buyer can
| just go into their Internet banking app, and transfer the
| money to the seller's phone number - assuming the seller
| has set that up. I've noticed a lot of people still don't
| set it up, often because they just haven't heard about it
| djhn wrote:
| Any purchase should be possible with legal tender.
|
| I will keep withdrawing my income in cash and inconveniencing
| others with cash transactions for every single purchase,
| including those exceeding this limit, out of principle.
|
| Digital ledgers have proven to be unreliable. Anyone arguing
| otherwise hasn't witnessed bank runs, withdrawal limits,
| transaction limits, hyperinflation and war wiping out lifetime
| savings and destroying people's lives.
| 9dev wrote:
| And you think a bag full of paper money in your basement will
| help you once bombs are dropped on your home town? How
| exactly will that help in war time more than money in your
| account that you can withdraw once in safety?
|
| If you choose to deal with cash exclusively for the sake of
| it, so be it. But for everyone else, it's just a less
| efficient way to move money from account A to account B.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Here is an easy one. Paying for food when there are power
| outages.
| ilyt wrote:
| 10k for food ?
| samtho wrote:
| > Can't really think of any good legitimate use cases for large
| amounts of cash.
|
| Affluent people tend to diversify where they keep their money.
| They have a few different checking accounts, savings/money-
| market accounts, brokerage accounts, assets, petty cash, and
| probably some other things. If you do not have the level of
| wealth that gives you the flexibility to keep large sums of
| money in a relatively inaccessible place (e.g. a brokerage
| account that might take 1-3 days to liquidate and another day
| to do a bank transfer), you might opt to keep a few thousand in
| cash in case something happens with your bank, such as your
| account being frozen or just drained due to fraudulent
| activity. It's always prudent to keep reserves in diversified
| locations.
| Canada wrote:
| I want to be able to pay for at least a year of rent without
| relying on a bank.
|
| I want to be able to pay for as much as possible without
| leaving any record with a third party if I don't want to.
|
| I also want to be able to take all of _my money_ out of the
| bank and keep it for myself, and give it to whoever I want,
| whenever I want, without having anyone 's permission to do so,
| or reporting that I have done so to anyone.
|
| Why is that illegitimate?
| Teandw wrote:
| It's quite simple really.
|
| Because the vast majority of people that want to do those
| things, are wanting to get away with doing bad things and/or
| not paying their way correctly in society.
|
| You may be a rare outlier but there has to be precautions.
| vageli wrote:
| And someone decided once to put an explosive in their shoe,
| and now we all have to take our shoes off at the airport.
| At this rate, our future is looking extremely restricted.
| endgame wrote:
| Extremely appropriate username.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| I want to be able to legally receive my salary as cash without
| special permission; eg, a customer paying me for a project.
|
| This law prohibits paying me for a month in cash.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| If you make more than 10k euro in a month, that is.
| kvdveer wrote:
| This law prohibits you from doing that without reporting it.
| You'd have report that anyway, when filing your taxes, so
| apart from some extra admin work, that's not much of an extra
| hurdle, assuming it honest money.
|
| If you receive your EUR10k as payment for a shipment of
| cocaine, you probably don't want to report it, so then you'll
| enter the territories of fiscal crime.
| kgwgk wrote:
| The only exceptions would be: (a)
| payments between persons who are not acting in a
| professional function; (b) payments or
| deposits made at the premises of credit institutions,
| electronic money institutions and payment institutions.
| [...]; (c) central banks when performing their
| tasks.
|
| It's not that you would have to report it - you just cannot
| do it.
| Hermel wrote:
| Like in chess, the moves that you could play matter as much as
| the moves that you do play. So even if I don't need cash, I
| still appreciate the possibility of using cash in case my bank
| of government locks me out of my accounts.
|
| For example, the Canadian government froze the accounts of
| political activists during the Corona crisis. This shocked me.
| It shows that even countries that are perceived as free and
| democratic sometimes cannot resist to abuse their power. And
| the more power we give them, the more likely it is that a
| politician will abuse his or her power sooner or later.
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| Fuck you god damn tyrants. They are desperate to have approval
| over every transaction. Set some "reasonable limit" that the
| sheep approve of then you can inflate it away to punish them. No
| wonder they're pushing inflation harder. In a year's time that
| limit becomes 9k.
| olivermarks wrote:
| 'By limiting large cash payments, the EU will make it harder for
| criminals to launder dirty money. '
|
| Bizarre how the EU is penalizing everyone in order to 'make it
| harder for criminals to launder dirty money'.
|
| People pay taxes in order to have their bureaucrats serve them by
| creating a safe financial and social environment, not to have
| them assume everyone is a criminal/terrorist and greatly impede
| access to their assets based on that logic.
|
| The EU (formerly the 'common market') has become an
| authoritarian, autocratic monster.
| nix23 wrote:
| >Bizarre how the EU is penalizing everyone in order to 'make it
| harder for criminals to launder dirty money'.
|
| Just imagine one criminal say's to another:
|
| Sorry i cant take those 15k euros, it's illegal didn't you know
| that???
| Teandw wrote:
| In what circumstances have you or someone you known ever needed
| to pay for something over EUR10k in cash?
| jesusofnazarath wrote:
| A car?
| olivermarks wrote:
| http://bigmeet.com/eng/maybe-the-best-swap-meet-in-europe/
|
| http://www.nsra.org.uk/southern-swapmeet/
|
| https://www.pomonaswapmeet.com
|
| etc
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| And if anything I absolutely hate cash transactions for
| used cars but sadly there haven't been many alternatives.
| Maybe this will finally fix this.
| CosmicShadow wrote:
| I'm still not sure who buys a car that expensive with cash,
| seems sketchy, inconvenient and unsafe. I wouldn't take
| cash if someone wanted to pay me that much, in fact someone
| did, they paid me for a contract with $5000 in used 20s and
| it was really fucked up, I didn't know how to get it into a
| bank or use it for anything without setting off alarms.
| olivermarks wrote:
| Cash is king. If you are buying a non running classic car
| and have a tow vehicle and trailer ready you can drive a
| hard bargain in the moment.
|
| Suggesting laborious bureaucratic transactions over
| several days removes this common occurrence in that
| world, along with at many other gatherings of specialists
| - antiques, pedigree animals, whatever
| olivermarks wrote:
| Buying older cars and car parts and similar specialized areas
| Teandw wrote:
| I would make the bold assumption that people paying over
| EUR10,000 for a used car in cash is a very rare situation.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| What's the alternative? Venmo or it's equivalent, or a
| [certified] check?
|
| I'd prefer to still have the option of a cash payment,
| even if it's one I'd rarely if ever utilize.
| Teandw wrote:
| "Bizarre how the EU is penalizing everyone in order to 'make it
| harder for criminals to launder dirty money'."
|
| This likely affects a number of people that is so small, that
| it's irrelevant. Not sure it makes sense to say that such a law
| that effects a tiny number of individuals is penalizing
| everyone.
| pelorat wrote:
| > Bizarre how the EU is penalizing everyone in order to 'make
| it harder for criminals to launder dirty money'.
|
| It doesn't affect anyone. No one in Europe uses cash for
| anything more expensive than maybe 200 euros. Of course in some
| countries like Sweden and the Netherlands no one uses cash any
| more at all, and almost all ATM machines have been removed. I
| believe cash-only places are now outlawed. The reason for this
| is because of the small stores run by immigrants that does you-
| never-know-what with the money you give them.
|
| > People pay taxes in order to have their bureaucrats serve
| them by creating a safe financial and social environment
|
| Safe in this case means eliminating those shady cash-only
| stores. Here in Europe the cash-only stores (nowadays outlawed)
| were mostly run by immigrants. We're talking pizzerias, barber
| shops, fast food trucks, corner cafes. Places where a lot of
| cash is laundered.
|
| God riddance to those places.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| I'm European, and mostly use cash.
| perlgeek wrote:
| > It doesn't affect anyone. No one in Europe uses cash for
| anything more expensive than maybe 200 euros.
|
| Sold a used car just last year, got 2700EUR in cash for it.
|
| Much easier than doing a bank transfer (which takes 1 day to
| arrive, if you're unlucky, and can be rolled back), or a
| paypal transfer (which can be undone) or anything else
| between to individuals.
|
| For b2c or b2b I agree, nobody pays that much in cash, but
| for individuals transacting with one another, it still seems
| the easiest option.
| bigfudge wrote:
| Bank transfers in the uk are pretty much instantaneous
| during working hours, and often outside too
| crazygringo wrote:
| I sure wouldn't want to risk discovering I'd been paid in
| high-quality counterfeit notes. Accepting 2700EUR cash
| feels insane to me.
|
| In Europe do you not have cashier's checks? That's what we
| use in the US for something like a used car, since most
| people don't want to carry around a car's worth of cash,
| even for a short period of time.
|
| You go to the bank, and get a check _drawn on the bank_ for
| the amount. The person receiving it can call the bank to
| verify it 's valid if they don't trust it. And if you get
| robbed (or lose it) you can have the check cancelled.
| nottorp wrote:
| > and the Netherlands no one uses cash any more
|
| In my one visit to the Netherlands I had to use cash because
| small places wouldn't take Visa/MC because it was too
| expensive for them. They had no problem accepting cash tho.
|
| Which Netherlands have you been to?
| hazzahzah wrote:
| Visa/MC is not so widely accepted in smaller shops/stores.
| However, if you have a maestro debit card you basically
| have no need to carry cash. I live in Holland and never
| carry cash, even when going to food markets or when going
| out for far cycling trips to village areas. Only reason I
| carry cash (and I specifically have to go to the ATM for
| this) is when I go to my barber, of which it is obvious,
| they only accept cash so they can pay some of their
| employees under the table (something I don't really care
| about tbh).
| Phemist wrote:
| We dont use cash very often, but we have our own separate
| payment networks called Maestro and V-Pay. So tourists
| nearly always have to resort to cash transactions.
| chupasaurus wrote:
| > our own separate payment networks called Maestro
|
| You mean Mastercard's brand?
| Gatsky wrote:
| Capital controls are one of the elements of financial repression.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_repression
| sealeck wrote:
| You have to analyse at the population here; capital controls
| are useful for preventing people who have accumulated sizeable
| asset holdings in country X from moving them to a jurisdiction
| Y where there are effectively no taxes. Of course this reduces
| the freedom of the people who control these assets, but there
| is a common fallacy (usually introduced by the very same
| people) where they claim that liberty (in the abstract, without
| the very important qualification that this is _their_ liberty)
| is being surpressed while not noting the very important fact
| that _they are the most powerful members of society_ and that
| preventing them from moving their assets means that a whole lot
| of good (social welfare) cna be done for other people, without
| substantially impacting the material qualiy of their lives (the
| wealth/"improves my life" is pretty logarithmic IME, e.g.
| moving from 20,000 EUR -> 30,000 EUR of income a year makes a
| huge difference, moving from 30,000 EUR -> 130,000 EUR still
| makes a big difference, but 130,000 EUR -> 1 million EUR
| probably does not bring a concomitant increase in happiness).
|
| I think this quote from Paulo Freire is pertinent
|
| > The former oppressors do not feel liberated [once the people
| with less power than them are given more]. On the contrary,
| they genuinely consider themselves to be oppressed. Conditioned
| by the experience of oppressing others, any situation other
| than their former seems to them like oppression. Formerly, they
| could eat, dress, wear shoes, be educated, travel, and hear
| Beethoven; while millions did not eat, had no clothes or shoes,
| neither studied nor travelled, much less listened to Beethoven.
| Any restriction on this way of life, in the name of the rights
| of the community, appears to the former oppressors as a
| profound violation of their individual rights - although they
| had no respect for the millions who suffered and died of
| hunger, pain, sorrow, and despair. For the oppressors, 'human
| beings' refers only to themselves; other people are 'things'.
| catiopatio wrote:
| The tax-man and the police state are the oppressors, not the
| taxed and the prosecuted.
| sealeck wrote:
| > The tax-man and the police state are the oppressors
|
| The oppressors _of whom_? For example taxing billionaires
| is not "oppression". I completely agree that modern tax
| policy is much too burdensome on relatively poor
| individuals in comparison to relatively wealthy ones
| (certainly given the amount of money spent on policing
| petty crime compared to catching large-scale tax evasion),
| but that isn't to say we shouldn't have taxes!
| catiopatio wrote:
| > The oppressors _of whom_?
|
| The taxed and the prosecuted.
|
| Taxes aren't an inherent ethical imperative, and
| certainly not something for which we should accept
| endless government intrusion in service of the collection
| thereof.
|
| Taxes are an imperfect mechanism for funding an imperfect
| state, not an innate moral right to spend the fruits of
| others' labor.
| sealeck wrote:
| > The taxed and the prosecuted.
|
| You said this before but which taxed people and which
| prosecuted are you thinking of?
|
| > Taxes aren't an inherent ethical imperative
|
| Even if this is not true, there are certainly a number of
| pragmatic reasons to support them (it turns out it's much
| nicer to live somewhere where there is a fair and just
| judicial system, a functioning education system,
| roads/bridges/etc, internet, clean water, sewage systems
| and social protection for the less fortunate and well
| off).
| prox wrote:
| That really depends on your locale
| throwaway41597 wrote:
| The same argument of diminishing returns, that quality of
| life doesn't improve much when going from 130kEUR to 1MEUR
| can be applied to capital controls. Is this 10kEUR limit
| really what is needed to save the welfare state? Were the
| previous controls not enough?
|
| Or is it that the welfare state is collapsing on its own and
| grasping at straws?
| defrost wrote:
| It's a spreadng practice.
|
| Australia is introducing (or may have already passed?) a similar
| Act with an AU $10K limit on "unapproved" cash transactions.
|
| Over the limit you'll need approval.
|
| Of course the usual loophole for the weathy applies, 3x $3,000
| face value gold bullion coins [1] is under the cash transaction
| limit, although at a kilo each and ~$88K per in valuae, that's
| almost $300K in value technically under any travel or transaction
| declaration "$10K face value" limits . . .
|
| [1] https://www.perthmint.com/shop/bullion/bullion-
| coins/austral...
| WirelessGigabit wrote:
| I couldn't find the face value of those coins?
|
| If I understand correctly you're saying: there is a coin that I
| can buy for $100,000 (because of its weight in gold) yet it is
| stamped with $1, which is its face value.
|
| As such it only counts as $1, and this thus is not reportable?
| chordalkeyboard wrote:
| face value is 3000 Australian Dollars.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| Which is still 3% of its actual value if melted down.
| user_named wrote:
| 3x $3000 in cash is also under the limit.
| _ink_ wrote:
| The point is that the face value of the coins counts for the
| limit, not the value when you sell those coins.
| neilv wrote:
| In the US, I think multiple transactions of $9K to avoid a
| $10K reporting threshold would be illegal:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuring
| andylynch wrote:
| Yes it's called 'structuring' or smirking and is variously
| restricted in many places since it's an obvious on-ramp to
| money laundering and tax evasion.
| acover wrote:
| Is the goal to push people to crypto?
| ilyt wrote:
| > The new EU anti-money laundering and combating the
| financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) rules will be extended to
| the entire crypto sector, obliging all crypto-asset service
| providers (CASPs) to conduct due diligence on their
| customers. This means that they will have to verify facts and
| information about their customers.
| acover wrote:
| Thanks for the information and taking my bad question
| seriously.
| andai wrote:
| Note: $10,000 AUD is ~EUR6,500
| credit_guy wrote:
| If you choose to abide by the letter but not the spirit of the
| law, you take a big risk. Why would you do that? Especially if
| you are that rich?
| roenxi wrote:
| Every time the Australian government does something
| authoritarian I double my Monero holdings (I'm about to have to
| give that strategy up :[, unfortunately). If the government
| starts spinning out of control to the point where people
| actually need to start dodging these invasive financial laws,
| those gold coins are going to get seized.
| tomohawk wrote:
| Like in 1933.
|
| http://goldtheft.com/
| eastbound wrote:
| France requires that you declare all funds or "digital
| accounts" (assets, not only currencies) owned overseas, and
| made it legal to impose a one-off seizure on all accounts
| above 100kEUR overnight, like they did in Cyrpus. The world
| behaves as if countries were going to seize all privately-
| owned assets and make you live on salary.
| pjerem wrote:
| Well it's not that. Everything is seized because the money
| in your bank isn't technically yours. This is the same
| wherever in the world. However, there exists a public fund
| that guarantees that, in case of a bankruptcy of your bank,
| you'll be compensated by this fund up to 100kEUR.
|
| So it's technically impossible to lose anything if you
| don't have more than 100kEUR in a checking account. Which,
| even if you were rich, would be a rather stupid move
| because you don't earn any interest on this. If your
| patrimony is superior to 100kEUR, you probably own
| financial assets rather than money in your checking
| accounts. And since you own your financial assets and your
| bank is only doing the management for you, they can't be
| seized because they aren't owned by the bank.
|
| So it's blatantly false to say that you can be seized of
| anything above 100kEUR. You've got to manage your money
| really badly to be bitten by this.
| coldtea wrote:
| This is a whole new level of confusion...
| ElKrist wrote:
| " and made it legal to impose a one-off seizure on all
| accounts above 100kEUR overnight" please give a source or
| at least detail the conditions it can be applied. The way
| you phrase it sounds like it can be completely arbitrary
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Wouldn't you need to use that $3000 coin to pay $3000, ie use
| it for its face value, for this loophole to 'work'? In which
| case it would not be very useful...
|
| If you use it to pay $88k then the transaction is obviously
| $88k although you've then paid in gold, not cash.
|
| I feel that this is a "you can't have your cake and eat it too"
| situation.
| ISL wrote:
| It allows you to acquire coins over time, then use them later
| to move wealth in a less-traceable way.
| ilyt wrote:
| You could just do same thing with normal money tho ?
| hervature wrote:
| Just hypothesizing, do not actually know if this is the
| mechanism, but it is entirely possible that by storing
| gold with a broker could allow them to access the value
| in order to make other investments. Essentially, having
| cash as collateral means having it in a bank and subject
| to these restrictions whereas gold in a 3rd party vault
| might not be but still give you the same access to
| credit.
| rapsey wrote:
| Anyone can use that loophole it requires no special legal
| machinations.
| goodpoint wrote:
| Anyone that has 300K$ laying around in gold is most likely
| very wealthy.
| jefftk wrote:
| Or acquired the coins specifically for using this loophole
| tsukikage wrote:
| I mean, if the thing you are trying to work around is a law
| preventing you from paying 300K in cash, I don't think
| using bullion changes much about how wealthy you are.
| pessimizer wrote:
| What if you're trying to work around a law preventing you
| from paying EUR10,001, like the law being discussed?
| tzs wrote:
| That reminds me of the old argument that laws prohibiting
| same sex marriage or prohibiting engaging in homosexual sex
| do not discriminate against gay people since they prohibit
| both gay and straight people from marrying someone of the
| same sex or engaging in homosexual sex.
| RunSet wrote:
| "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor
| alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to
| steal their bread."
|
| -- Anatole France
| kim0 wrote:
| https://www.getmonero.org/
| [deleted]
| oxff wrote:
| Nothing to do with "fighting corruption" (or else a literal
| convicted felon wouldn't be head of ECB, - lol, lmao even) they
| just want to monitor you more.
| geysersam wrote:
| Why wouldn't it have to do with fighting corruption?
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| There is a ton of corruption going on at much higher dollar
| values and governments do very little about it - corrupt
| businessmen tend to be the most reliable donors.
| coldtea wrote:
| Because those in power thrive and support corruption at very
| high levels.
|
| This is for poor schnucks and the occasional scapegoat.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| nothing says "already paid" as a credit card transaction.
|
| Maybe you prefer to keep paper receipts for tens of years and
| prove they are legit, I honestly don't.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| What we <<prefer>> - sorry, radically "will" - is to live in
| dignity.
|
| This implies, no record of personal purchases around.
|
| The current "fight against cash" goes in direction of that
| risk.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Specifically Christine Lagarde was found guilty of 'carelessly'
| giving a massive payout of taxpayers' money to controversial
| French businessman Bernard Tapie.
| cm2187 wrote:
| It's a form of social credit system, china style. You cannot
| live without a bank account these days, but if you piss off the
| governemnt, they will take it away from you, like Trudeau did.
|
| I am sure there are _some_ benefits to living into this system,
| doesn 't mean it's a good idea to do it.
| mgbmtl wrote:
| To monitor for... corruption?
|
| From the point of view of the state, tax evasion these days is
| by far the highest priority.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I can't find a single sensible reason why tax evasion would
| be the highest priority of EU governments... IMHO there are
| pages of more pressing issues.
| mgbmtl wrote:
| Sure, but those other problems need funding.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Tax levels are high and tax are being collected.
| Governments aren't short of money because of tax evasion.
|
| Tax evasion is not a top priority however you look at
| it... the argument sounds like "but think of the
| children" to justify things that are actually motivated
| by other aims and/or ideological reasons.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| My country loses about EUR32 billions in yearly income
| due to tax evasion. That's the amount of money that could
| change many lives if used right. Instead we're cutting
| benefits to the poor bto reduce our deficit. Tax evasion
| is a top priority.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| Taxation is nothing more than legalized extortion. Those
| EUR32bn never belonged to the state and I salute people
| who manage to get away with it.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Most states are complex structures largely manipulated by
| a tiny number of people for the benefit of themselves and
| the top echelon so as to capture the vast majority of the
| wealth created by everyone for a minority of
| nonproductives whos contribution is owning things as
| opposed to doing useful work. Erasing every obligation
| they presently possess to the functional state that
| enabled the nonproductive to live in wealth and luxury
| seems like an incredibly bad idea for them and us.
|
| Everyone deserves health care, fire suppression, police
| to respond to criminal behavior, courts, a national
| defense and a defense of democracy against terrorists and
| would be fascists and others who would overthrow it.
|
| Some things like health care can be provided albeit
| exceptionally poorly with a ridiculously bad ROI by a
| mixed private / public system. Others are ridiculous to
| imagine. For example if you privatize the military you
| create a single concentration of power that could
| trivially be bought out by anyone wanting to shitcan
| democracy tomorrow.
|
| If it were possible to effectively run a large society
| like that one would suppose that in thousands of years
| one would have been so constituted.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| I do realise that. I'm not against all (or fair)
| taxation. I just sympathize with people who manage to get
| away with tax evasion.
|
| Sentences like "the state lost EUR30bn of revenue because
| of tax evasion" rubs me the wrong way. It's not too far
| off from saying "mugger lost EUR500 of revenue because
| the potential victim ran away".
|
| I do realise it's a fallacy--it's just not too far off.
| eddsh1994 wrote:
| Tax the large companies properly first, then come after
| the little people.
| coldtea wrote:
| The most pressing issue is the amount of funding wasted
| by bureaucrats, corporate tax deductions, subsidies to
| their friends, and so on...
|
| So no...
| sgjohnson wrote:
| > To monitor for... corruption?
|
| Yes, because people taking a bribe would definitely care that
| it's illegal to have a cash transaction over EUR10k
| zxcb1 wrote:
| Terror is an emerging characteristic of EU institutions and their
| mismanagement of Europe; perhaps we should stop financing them?
| [deleted]
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