With reportable transactions, you can theoretically be taxed whenever the money moves, or whenever it stays in the wrong place for too long. A suitcase of cash

With reportable transactions, you can theoretically be taxed whenever the money moves, or whenever it stays in the wrong place for too long. A suitcase of cash only pays the 22% once, and then you can buy as much cocaine and companionship as you like with it, without reporting any of it to the taxman, or filing 1099s on behalf of your grey-market friends, who would otherwise be charging you extra to pay for their sales tax, income tax, FICA, and social security. Or maybe you just need a quick $100k to keep an ex-lover quiet, but your spouse keeps too sharp an eye on the joint accounts, and you would rather pay extra to not answer any uncomfortable questions. That's not about the taxes; but about drawing a contrast between services extended to VIPs that are completely unavailable to mundane folk. If I want cash, I have to go somewhere else with a card and push buttons on a machine, which may still charge me $3 for my trouble. And I can only do that if I have already paid all applicable taxes on the money in the account. And I'm pretty sure that if I ever got an actual suitcase of cash from my bank, they would rat me out to the cops before I even touched it, who would then seize it during a pretext traffic stop about 100 m outside the bank parking lot, for their civil forfeiture party fund.