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EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

consilium.europa.eu

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Re: EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

#491

Post by moritonal »

elorant wrote: post #245
Teandw wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How is it money laundering when the money is already in the bank and thus accounted for?

Mob boss has lots of money and needs to launder it.

Mob boss starts a building company, paying the employees with dirty cash (but hey, no income tax, so no ones complains).

Building company charges customers, but asks for it in cash.

Dirty money goes out to construction employees, clean cash comes in from customers. The Bank flag is just saying there is laundering occurring near the money.

Re: EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

#492

Post by woodruffw »

vl wrote: post #483
woodruffw wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This was in a branch that before pandemic would fork out 10k easily. I’m not the only one who experienced this - my friends experienced this across different banks in different states.

This doesn't contradict what I've said, and doesn't imply financial instability: it's not particularly surprising that banks weren't receiving as many cash deliveries during the first year of the pandemic, or that demand for cash withdrawals was higher than normal.

Re: EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

#494

Post by steelframe »

isodev wrote: post #395
SQueeeeeL wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The uppercase tells me you have strong feelings about this and maybe I’m missing something obvious. Would you explain why my freedom will be diminished by this? I can still pay and buy whatever I want. It just happens faster and more secure.

> maybe I’m missing something obvious

A common tactic of centralized control is to "boil the frog," so to speak. Start with a control that seems to most people to be lax enough to be "not that big a deal," and then later -- maybe years -- tighten the control once enough people are acclimated to the existence of the control in the first place.

If the government were to come along and say, "If you are female and are purchasing travel tickets between a state where abortion is illegal to a state where abortion is legal, we want to know about it, so we're requiring that you use a traceable method of payment," then the problem may become more obvious to you.

If instead the government says, "We're requiring that you use a traceable method of payment," but doesn't disclose a specific reason why, and later decides to use it to determine when females travel to states where abortion is legal, that's not as obvious a problem. At first.

In this case, it could be, "We're requiring that you use a form of payment that we can easily monitor when engaging in transactions over $X." After about 5 years or so of people getting used to that, they can move the threshold to something like $(X/2). Then after a few more years, make it mandatory for anything over $50 or $20.

So we may want to not tolerate the activity at all, on principle. RMS' The Right to Read* is in orbit around the general theme, I think. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html

* hysterically, Bing prominently provides results about locking down documents when I search it for "rms right to read"

Re: EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

#495

Post by wslh »

nottorp wrote: post #296
pelorat wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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?

In Denmark they usually charge you extra if you use a credit card.

Re: EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

#496

Post by crazygringo »

lordnacho wrote: post #424
crazygringo wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sure wouldn't want to risk discovering I'd been paid in high-quality counterfeit notes. Accepting 2700€ 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 rec…

Haven't written a cheque in the UK for 20 years. However I have received them from HMRC for refunds.

It's not a check you write.

It's a cashier's check.

They're not used frequently -- really only for things like closing a bank account, buying a used car, putting down an apartment deposit and first month's rent, that kind of thing.

I haven't written a personal check in close to 20 years either, but I've certainly needed to use a cashier's check a handful of times!

Re: EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

#497

Post by [deleted] »

pelorat wrote: post #264
olivermarks wrote: post #253

'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 as…

> 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…

[deleted]

Re: EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

#498

Post by matkoniecz »

moritonal wrote: post #486
matkoniecz wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one in Europe uses cash for anything more expensive than maybe 200 euros. That is absurd. People regularly pay for things like new computer with cash. And family member was buying a flat recently - seller wanted cash, so transaction took place in a bank. Cash was withdrawn (around 90 000 euro?), exchanged when sale was notarized and deposited. As I understand, this would not be legal anymore?

Hol up, the buyer wanted cash for buying a flat? And no-one saw anything fishy in that? Really sounds like your family member accidentally helped launder money.

Entire transaction took place in bank - and cash was immediately deposited into bank and never even left bank building. Not entirely sure why it would be a problem or enable anything?

(and obviously, seller wanted cash) (and it is possible that I misunderstood something)

And I would do the same - just to avoid worrying that maybe transfer is not going to arrive or get reverted or something (that is 100% hypothetical, I do own any housing).

So I am mildly unhappy that it gets outlawed.

Re: EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

#499

Post by geysersam »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #57
geysersam wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't it have to do with fighting corruption?

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.

Yes but why do you think they are not working to prevent that at the same time?

Re: EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

#500

Post by geysersam »

coldtea wrote: post #376
geysersam wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't it have to do with fighting corruption?

Because those in power thrive and support corruption at very high levels. This is for poor schnucks and the occasional scapegoat.

We have to fight corruption at every level.
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