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Australian government proposes to limit cash payments for purchases to AUD$10K

88 points by Mononokay 8y ago

CryptoPunk 8y ago
This flies in the face of liberal democratic tradition. It effectively makes it mandatory to utilize a network, that bars any party not licensed by the government from acting as a node (the inter-bank network), for any significant economic exchange. I suspect that by increasing the cost of law abidance, it will encourage defection from the formal economy and its democratically accountable judicial system.
- hndamien 8y ago
  I had all but given up on our banks. They are really herding us into the arms of crypto. Now I just need a Monero hardware wallet.
  - sho 8y ago
    > Now I just need a Monero hardware wallet I'm going to go out on a limb and predict you will never, ever be able to buy anything physical with Monero. Especially something over $10k or shipped over international lines. edit: if you are claiming I am wrong, let's see a URL with a physical product available with payment in Monero
    - 45h34jh53k4j 8y ago
      I think this is a very short sighted prediction. You could have said this about bitcoin in 2010, and you would have been wrong then too.
      - 45h34jh53k4j 8y ago
        Update: You could also have said this about dogecoin in 2013, and been wrong also: (man sells house for $130k of dogecoin) https://edition.cnn.com/2014/02/26/tech/innovation/dogecoin-cryptocurrency-tech-irpt/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2014/02/26/tech/innovation/dogecoin-...
      - mikeash 8y ago
        You could have said this about dogecoin in 2013 and be entirely correct. Just because Bitcoin took off doesn’t mean another one will.
    - hellbanner 8y ago
      What's with the FUD? https://www.reddit.com/r/moneromarket/ https://www.reddit.com/r/moneromarket/
      - sho 8y ago
        The hilarious thing is that moneroapparel.com demands payment in USD
  - hellbanner 8y ago
    Make sure you securely generate your private keys with true hardware randomness.
paranoidrobot 8y ago
Note that an important clarification is that person-to-person transactions are still permitted in cash, without limit. So if you want to sell your house, and someone else wants to pay for it in cash, then you're all fine.
- pjc50 8y ago
  Presumably there's an ID requirement in the conveyancing somewhere and the transaction goes through a land registry?
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  The frog boils slowly.
walterbell 8y ago
From https://www.cato.org/cato-journal/springsummer-2018/curse-war-cash https://www.cato.org/cato-journal/springsummer-2018/curse-wa... "The phrase “war on cash” suggests a parallel to the “war on drugs” and aptly so. In both wars, traditional civil liberties are shunted aside in the criminalization, surveillance, and prosecution of victimless private activities ... The war on cash might be more accurately labelled the “war on people who use cash.” What are suppressed by the above-listed tactics are not inanimate objects but people. Cash itself experiences no harms. People do. Coercive anti-cash policies abridge the freedom and reduce the welfare of peaceful individuals who prefer to use cash. ... The war on cash is being waged for the exclusive benefit of those who already wield an inordinate amount of power and control over the economy and the people that are struggling in it. And they want more. By slowly, quietly killing cash, they seek to seize the last remaining thing that offers people a small semblance of privacy, anonymity, and personal freedom in their increasingly controlled and surveyed lives."
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- komali2 8y ago
  >The war on cash is being waged for the exclusive benefit of those who already wield an inordinate amount of power and control over the economy Yup, this article tickled a deeply buried "sovereign citizen" type personality I didn't even know I had. So without cash your options are write a check, which means you have to give your money to a bank, or use a credit card, which means you have to give your money to a bank. Americans learned in 2008 exactly how much power banks have. I'm reading a fantastic book right now titled "Walkaway." It takes place in a near-future where solar and hydrogen energy are robust and cost effective enough that, when combined with raw material feedstock, can be plugged into 3d printers to make pretty much anything you've got drawings for. Combined with an open source CAD community and UN refugee resources, it opens the opportunity for people to simply walk away from civilization, print up shelters, and build anarchist communities that refuse to even use popularity as a form of currency. It's a fun idea to chew over - post scarcity, why not just walk away?
  - 8y ago
pg_bot 8y ago
The path to hell is paved with good intentions.
MrMorden 8y ago
Cigarette taxes north of $30/pack cause smuggling? I'm shocked to find gambling in this establishment!
sho 8y ago
This is totally inevitable everywhere and in fact cash itself will probably be gone by 2050. Make whatever principled claims you wish but I would almost bet money that 80%+ of cash purchases over $10k even today have something dodgy about where that money came from. You think governments don't know that? Their whole job is to prevent crime. This will make money laundering much harder and you know that. If the collateral damage is that lone couple of paranoid weirdos in each city who don't trust banks and actually store their savings under the mattress, well so be it. The appropriate response to this is not to try to ban it in the name of "privacy" because the stats will overwhelmingly not be in your favour. The correct response is to demand and implement appropriate and ironclad data privacy laws which make it literally impossible for agencies to do whole-database searches, go on fishing trips, or other abuses of data collection tech. A police agency should not be able to query every name who made a large-amount purchase. However, they should be able to, given a name, see what purchases that person has made. This is a critical distinction. Give up with the "the government should not be able to track my money flows!" argument. Might makes right, basically. Instead, focus your energy on legally constraining the use of that data to conform to principles of reasonable freedom and dignity. That is the only approach that will work, IMO.
- walterbell 8y ago
  How about $370 BILLION dollars laundered through one bank? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangs https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico...
- crwalker 8y ago
  I started reading this with strong disagreement but ended with complete agreement. Which organizations (esp. in bay area) are most effectively advocating for data ethics (including freedom, dignity, privacy)? EFF.org? I am looking for organizations focused on a charter of rights and responsibilities for software providers, data processors, etc. We've been terrible at self-regulating as an industry, which is absolutely begging for onerous regulations.
- conanbatt 8y ago
  Argentina is amidst a potential crisis right now, and one interesting concept I heard was that the only reason it hasnt exploded yet, is that millenials are not prepared to handle with bank runs. They haven't seen one yet and take attitudes that make it easy for the government to keep its overreach. I cant speak for australia, but if in argentina they made purchases over 10k illegal, it would be impossible to buy property, as they are only made in cash. Yes, lots if not most of money held in cash or similars has some stink, but its a stink made up by the government. I assure you tax evasion explains the vast majority of cash reserves and that is the reason why the government will always try to cruch on cash: to increase its revenues. Privacy is not a legitimate defense, but government overreach is not a legitimate attack. Who would you rather win? They guy that avoided taxes or the government that already taxes 28% of GDP?
pjc50 8y ago
So, two questions: - how many purely above board transactions of this value are there to be affected by this? - if people are to insist on financial anonymity, how is the tax burden to be distributed fairly?
- seem_2211 8y ago
  Yep - easy to have a visceral response to this change (how dare they cut down on my civil liberties!) but what sort of above board thing would you need to hand $10,000 over for? The only real example I can think of is buying a car, and even then, that's not that likely, that you'll use cash. Also how do you even get out $10,000? Most ATMs and banks have fairly low withdrawal limits.
  - michaelmrose 8y ago
    Have you considered inflation?
  - balabaster 8y ago
    Car dealerships often given huge discounts for cash purchases. So purchasing a car with cash is actually more likely than you give credit for. As for getting out $10,000 you'd usually need to go into a teller with at least a couple of days notice to withdraw that kind of cash. It's easy to do, if not exactly the most convenient. Getting money out of a bank isn't restricted to ATMs or debit card use. It's your money, the bank is just borrowing it from you to increase their spending power to increase their own profits and charging you for the benefit. It's a total coup: When you put money in your account, you're paying them for the privilege of lending them your money to so they can make further profits. You're still entitled to it back when you want it, in whatever forms the bank are capable of providing, up to and including cash.
    - scrooched_moose 8y ago
      Isn't paying "cash" for a car a just shorthand for "money up front, no credit cards or loans"? I don't personally know anyone who's taken $20,000 cash into a dealer for a car, they all pay by check which is still allowed: > It means transactions over $10,000 will have to be made through an electronic payment system or cheque when purchasing goods or services.
majortennis 8y ago
Australia tax things like cigarettes massively. I think any black market tobacco is because of their excessive taxing
- ShorsHammer 8y ago
  Low-key prohibition.
- Raphmedia 8y ago
  Taxing something you can grow in your own yard will always cause a black market.
elvirs 8y ago
so how many of you who is opppsing this has paid for or sold something in cash amount larger than 10k? Other than buying a used vehicle I dont think regular people engage in large cash transactions. While tons of untaxed money changes hands between rich crooks to buy and sell valuable items bypassing any taxation or tracing. Before you start advocating for rich crooks, think again what is in it for you that you want to fight for it so bad
- sunir 8y ago
  33 years ago... We used to use cash receipts from our convenience store to resupply at the cash and carry. It wasn’t uncommon. I saw transactions in high figures often from my fellow customers. Not sure how common it is now.
  - elvirs 8y ago
    33 years ago cash may have been the fastest safest and easiest for of payment compared to today when there is so many fast, convenient and low fee payment options available. when a new legislation is passed the idea is to serve the needs of people 5-10 years from now, not 30 years ago.
- alistairSH 8y ago
  Stop thinking about individual consumers, who may or may not have $10k+ transactions very frequently. Instead, think of small businesses. They regularly have the opportunity to have large transactions. Vehicles, livestock, capital equipment.
  - mperham 8y ago
    And they use checks, bank transfers, etc for those transactions. Not cash.
    - pjc50 8y ago
      Exactly. What business owner is going to entrust huge amounts of cash to staff if they don't have to, or aren't going through cash to keep it off the books?
balabaster 8y ago
Is this a bid by Credit Card companies to force everyone to pay them, or so that when you step out of line they can control you by controlling your access to resources? Either way, impeding your ability to purchase things in any manner you (and your vendor or customer) see fit isn't okay by me.
- tdb7893 8y ago
  It's to stop black markets. There are very few legitimate cash transactions over 10k as few people have that much in cash and cash transactions that big are very cumbersome.
  - nasalgoat 8y ago
    I collect pinball machines and they are regularly over $10,000 for the highly-sought titles. Unlike a car which needs to be registered, they are "cash and carry" items and accepting any form of payment other than cash is risky (paypal? cheque? I think not). It's like buying stuff at a garage sale with a credit card. Ridiculous.
    - tdb7893 8y ago
      "Transactions with financial institutions or consumer to consumer non-business transactions will not be affected" so my interpretation is that your use case doesn't apply but I'm not sure
hnaccy 8y ago
The state will always seek more control over the individual, this is the state's MO. There is a slope and it's very slippery.
pmontra 8y ago
Italy has a limit of 3,000 Euro for cash payments. There is a table with the limits since the early '90s at https://www.codiceazienda.it/limite-contanti-tabella-riepilogativa/ https://www.codiceazienda.it/limite-contanti-tabella-riepilo... (reference to the law, dd/mm/yyyy, limit.) The first one is in Liras, about 10k Euro. My feeling is that it did little to achieve the desired result at least about money laundering. Apparently there are so many other ways to do that. For lawful expenses, checks (almost obsolete), bank transfers or credit cards are more convenient than getting cash at an ATM.
- jaclaz 8y ago
  To be picky, and as specified in the link, it has now (since 2016) a 3,000 Euro limit for cash payments, it had (and it was "pure folly" in practice) a limit of only 1,000 Euro in 2012-2015. JFYI, I remember that circa 2013 I had to make a particular payment to a Government Administration (only possible via the Post Office - Bollettino Postale) of around 1,200 Euro. The Post Office wouldn't accept cash or a credit card, only a particular kind of cheque (Assegno Circolare) emitted directly from my bank. Of course this check had to be printed and the bank software had a limited printing length field for the payee, which was an extremely long name. The Post Office wouldn't accept any abbreviation/acronym, I went back and forth several times between bank and Post Office until finally a bank director came out with a key that allowed to print the cheque in a "condensed" font.
avar 8y ago
Aside from the "war on cash" angle covered in other comments, setting these types of limits to an arbitrary dollar amount is fundamentally unjust. The CTR limit of $10K in the US is well known, but when it was introduced in the 70s[1] $10K was the equivalent of around $65K in today's money. Similarly, inflation will guarantee if this is enacted Australians won't be able to buy something like a phone, fridge or a laptop in a few decades due to the relentless progress of inflation. A few decades after that they won't be able to buy their groceries for $10K. These types of laws effectively outlaw cash entirely, they just have a time delay until they come into full effect. 1. https://repositorio.comillas.edu/rest/bitstreams/38908/retrieve https://repositorio.comillas.edu/rest/bitstreams/38908/retri...
- zwily 8y ago
  I think that’s the point. Governments would prefer cash just didn’t exist.
  - InitialLastName 8y ago
    Interestingly, governments also make money on cash existing; every moment's inflation that isn't realized by that cash is money in the government's pocket.
    - jacquesm 8y ago
      Not to mention all the cash that goes missing.
    - helianer 8y ago
      They will, of course, make their seinorage whether they are physical notes/coins, or added to the money supply via some bits on a disk.
Canada 8y ago
So, no more paying for things in Australia with more than $7500 USD? Brutal. Pretty soon it won't be legal to even pay your rent with cash. As far as I know various $10,000 reporting laws started in the 1970s. That's more than $60,000 in today's money. Have these limits ever been adjusted for inflation in any country?
- Rebelgecko 8y ago
  I think in the US the limit actually went lower. At the very least, multiple $9k transactions set off some flags
  - fomojola 8y ago
    That's just the structuring detection: the limit is $10000 but most financial institutions have some form of check for structuring or smurfing (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuring). One payment under the limit probably won't trigger it, but multiple will. Every couple of years there is a story about some small business owner who draws the ire of some government agency because they make multiple deposits under 10k.
  - tialaramex 8y ago
    Making several smaller payments in order to sidestep reporting requirements is called "structuring" and, duh, is illegal. In other news: Grabbing another person's hand and using it to slap them in the face is actually still just you committing assault.
lr 8y ago
I think both the US and Australia (and probably other countries), should just do away with the $50 and $100 bills. It becomes a lot more inconvenient if you have to carry around 5 times as many briefcases of cash for illegal transactions.
- callumjones 8y ago
  If you're going to do illegal stuff, I don't think carrying around a lot cash if going to weigh too heavily on your mind. You're either going to carry it in a car or have a person carry it for you.
- stronglikedan 8y ago
  You do realize that there are large legal transactions that should be allowed to be made without privacy violations, don't you?
  - maxk42 8y ago
    ... or wheelbarrows
grey-area 8y ago
Physical currency is going away in our lifetimes. What it is replaced by (digital cash owned by governments, corporate scrip, independent decentralised currencies) is up for debate, but its demise is not. Physical currency is controlled by governments, since it is expensive to produce and distribute, and network-connected payments are becoming more and more prevalent, it is inevitable that at some point the cost benefit ratio becomes untenable for governments and they remove this option. If you fight for its existence against the government which claims sole jurisdiction over it in the first place, you're fighting yesterday's war, and doomed to lose, better instead to imagine a different future based on digital currencies (of whatever stripe). I'm not keen on bitcoin et al, but the future is clearly not in physical tokens which represent fixed denominations of currency. If you were starting a currency today, would you start with cash?
- ddebernardy 8y ago
  Cash is the only way to keep one's spending private. (Anything else involves some kind of ID which, even if anonymous, can be traced back to you eventually.)
  - jerkstate 8y ago
    well, there's also Monero
- stronglikedan 8y ago
  > Physical currency is going away in our lifetimes. I don't think so. There are plenty of people that like to hoard their physical currency. There are plenty of people that don't trust "digital" currency (or other people having control of their money). I think it will be many decades before physical currency goes away - if it ever does.
  - grey-area 8y ago
    Decades is within our lifetime for most of us, this change is accelerating quicker in some countries than others (I suspect the US is behind in this respect). Some countries in Europe are actively considering phasing out cash in the decades to come. Hoarding physical currency for a sense of control is misguided; someone else controls the value of that physical money too, and there is a policy of inflation. It really is no different to digital currency in terms of control over value. Buy gold or land if you want to hoard (which each have their own problems), and use barter if you want to escape detection.
TomK32 8y ago
How about publishing all government transactions, excluding salaries if we must. If that works out well we can move on to publishing all transactions over a certain threshold (over a certain timeframe so you can't split the transactions). And publish all transactions that go to certain countries on black or grey lists. Limiting cash transaction is a okay thing be there's much bigger fish to catch, if only politics meant it seriously.
- thatcat 8y ago
  >excluding salaries Salaries are the most important transaction to monitor as they represent a recurring expense and easily become inflated in the government sector. Tax payers have a right to know what they pay for and how much it costs. What reason are you using to justify publishing private transactions?
  - TomK32 8y ago
    > excluding salaries _if we must_ My view might be biased as I live in Austria which is well-know for government subsidies and funding. And that includes gold handshakes to send 50 yr-olds into early retirement. WHY THE FUCK!?! Anyways, my point being: Instead of outlawing big cash payments (hard to achieve in my eyes) the government has a lot of opportunities where it can show the transparency needed to re-establish trust from the plebs (sorry, citizens). I'd see publishing public transactions as a first step and private ones as a second step. I mean, all we know about that dutch-irish sandwich is fairly limited, but if those transactions had been public early on some data scientist would have said "oh, that looks funny".
- squidfood 8y ago
  U.S. government salaries are publicly available. Google and you can get a search tool and find the salary for any employee.
wemdyjreichert 8y ago
It's not just the "war on cash". This "PAYG" thing is screwing over taxpayers. They could otherwise invest that money, make a return, then divest before the end of the year, earning a small profit. This robs them of that right so the government can instead. Disgusting.
- slagfart 8y ago
  Credit is honestly cheap enough that, if you really wanted to invest money that is a liability from the second you earn it, you could. All other things being equal, if the government earns the money upfront instead of having to wait, tax rates can decrease slightly for the same amount of income. I live in a PAYG country, and given higher rates of tax-default and tax-stress in non-PAYG countries, I prefer PAYG.
michaelmrose 8y ago
Some while back a bank ceo floated the idea of negative interest rates for consumer deposits. Not negative as in less than inflation but literally negative. If banks are allowed to kill the utility of transacting business with cash I would fully expect the amount of money sucked out of the economy by the banking sector to increase in fees to hold and transfer money. Cash transaction are a hard break on how asinine you can be without your customers deciding to do business with nobody.
JTbane 8y ago
The so-called 'war on cash' seems to be progressing nicely. Don't the bankers know that this will only make cryptocurrency more attractive to those who want privacy?
- mywittyname 8y ago
  > Don't the bankers know that this will only make cryptocurrency more attractive to those who want privacy? Yes they do, that's why they've become so heavily invested in it over the past few years. They can force onto normal people these absurd limits on the use cash, while controlling the most viable alternate transaction method. So, people in both legal and illicit businesses need the bankers.
jacquesm 8y ago
The best thing they could do to get people not to use cash for legal transactions is to increase the interest rates. People doing illegal transactions will just use a substitute.
newscracker 8y ago
Any push for eliminating cash is just another version of the nonsensical "if you have nothing to hide..." argument all over again to curb freedoms. > If we are going to refer to bank payments as ‘cashless’, we should then refer to cash payments as ‘bankless’. Because that’s what cash is, and right now it is the only thing standing between us and a completely privatised money system. [1] For those who are arguing about an inevitable future where cash won't exist, I'll just say that people will find other ways to transact (like barter, cryptocurrency, shadow currencies). And those will be for legal purposes and illegal purposes, depending on the people and the situation. Blanket assumptions of crime and illegal activities with cash are extremely naïve. [1]: https://aeon.co/essays/if-plastic-replaces-cash-much-that-is-good-will-be-lost https://aeon.co/essays/if-plastic-replaces-cash-much-that-is...
no_identd 8y ago
The problems with this go a lot deeper than most people realize, but I can't summarize them here. I strongly recommend reading the following paper to understand the importance of cash: http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue80/Huber80.pdf http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue80/Huber80.pdf Huber, Joseph - Split-circuit reserve banking - functioning, dysfunctions and future perspectives Abstract: "This paper first provides a detailed outline of how the present money system works. This then serves as a backdrop to discuss a number of orthodox fallacies and heterodox flaws in money theory, followed by a summary of the dysfunctions of split-circuit reserve banking and a brief outlook on the perspective of a single-circuit sovereign money system." Keywords: monetary economics, money theory, credit creation, banking theory, fractional reserve banking, monetary policy, monetary reform One may find comments on the paper here: https://rwer.wordpress.com/comments-on-rwer-issue-no-80/ https://rwer.wordpress.com/comments-on-rwer-issue-no-80/

88 points by Mononokay 8y ago

This flies in the face of liberal democratic tradition. It effectively makes it mandatory to utilize a network, that bars any party not licensed by the government from acting as a node (the inter-bank network), for any significant economic exchange. I suspect that by increasing the cost of law abidance, it will encourage defection from the formal economy and its democratically accountable judicial system.

hndamien 8y ago
I had all but given up on our banks. They are really herding us into the arms of crypto. Now I just need a Monero hardware wallet.
- sho 8y ago
  > Now I just need a Monero hardware wallet I'm going to go out on a limb and predict you will never, ever be able to buy anything physical with Monero. Especially something over $10k or shipped over international lines. edit: if you are claiming I am wrong, let's see a URL with a physical product available with payment in Monero
  - 45h34jh53k4j 8y ago
    I think this is a very short sighted prediction. You could have said this about bitcoin in 2010, and you would have been wrong then too.
    - 45h34jh53k4j 8y ago
      Update: You could also have said this about dogecoin in 2013, and been wrong also: (man sells house for $130k of dogecoin) https://edition.cnn.com/2014/02/26/tech/innovation/dogecoin-cryptocurrency-tech-irpt/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2014/02/26/tech/innovation/dogecoin-...
    - mikeash 8y ago
      You could have said this about dogecoin in 2013 and be entirely correct. Just because Bitcoin took off doesn’t mean another one will.
  - hellbanner 8y ago
    What's with the FUD? https://www.reddit.com/r/moneromarket/ https://www.reddit.com/r/moneromarket/
    - sho 8y ago
      The hilarious thing is that moneroapparel.com demands payment in USD
- hellbanner 8y ago
  Make sure you securely generate your private keys with true hardware randomness.

paranoidrobot 8y ago

Note that an important clarification is that person-to-person transactions are still permitted in cash, without limit. So if you want to sell your house, and someone else wants to pay for it in cash, then you're all fine.

pjc50 8y ago
Presumably there's an ID requirement in the conveyancing somewhere and the transaction goes through a land registry?
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
The frog boils slowly.

walterbell 8y ago

From https://www.cato.org/cato-journal/springsummer-2018/curse-war-cash https://www.cato.org/cato-journal/springsummer-2018/curse-wa... "The phrase “war on cash” suggests a parallel to the “war on drugs” and aptly so. In both wars, traditional civil liberties are shunted aside in the criminalization, surveillance, and prosecution of victimless private activities ... The war on cash might be more accurately labelled the “war on people who use cash.” What are suppressed by the above-listed tactics are not inanimate objects but people. Cash itself experiences no harms. People do. Coercive anti-cash policies abridge the freedom and reduce the welfare of peaceful individuals who prefer to use cash. ... The war on cash is being waged for the exclusive benefit of those who already wield an inordinate amount of power and control over the economy and the people that are struggling in it. And they want more. By slowly, quietly killing cash, they seek to seize the last remaining thing that offers people a small semblance of privacy, anonymity, and personal freedom in their increasingly controlled and surveyed lives."

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
komali2 8y ago
>The war on cash is being waged for the exclusive benefit of those who already wield an inordinate amount of power and control over the economy Yup, this article tickled a deeply buried "sovereign citizen" type personality I didn't even know I had. So without cash your options are write a check, which means you have to give your money to a bank, or use a credit card, which means you have to give your money to a bank. Americans learned in 2008 exactly how much power banks have. I'm reading a fantastic book right now titled "Walkaway." It takes place in a near-future where solar and hydrogen energy are robust and cost effective enough that, when combined with raw material feedstock, can be plugged into 3d printers to make pretty much anything you've got drawings for. Combined with an open source CAD community and UN refugee resources, it opens the opportunity for people to simply walk away from civilization, print up shelters, and build anarchist communities that refuse to even use popularity as a form of currency. It's a fun idea to chew over - post scarcity, why not just walk away?
- 8y ago

pg_bot 8y ago

The path to hell is paved with good intentions.

MrMorden 8y ago

Cigarette taxes north of $30/pack cause smuggling? I'm shocked to find gambling in this establishment!

sho 8y ago

This is totally inevitable everywhere and in fact cash itself will probably be gone by 2050. Make whatever principled claims you wish but I would almost bet money that 80%+ of cash purchases over $10k even today have something dodgy about where that money came from. You think governments don't know that? Their whole job is to prevent crime. This will make money laundering much harder and you know that. If the collateral damage is that lone couple of paranoid weirdos in each city who don't trust banks and actually store their savings under the mattress, well so be it. The appropriate response to this is not to try to ban it in the name of "privacy" because the stats will overwhelmingly not be in your favour. The correct response is to demand and implement appropriate and ironclad data privacy laws which make it literally impossible for agencies to do whole-database searches, go on fishing trips, or other abuses of data collection tech. A police agency should not be able to query every name who made a large-amount purchase. However, they should be able to, given a name, see what purchases that person has made. This is a critical distinction. Give up with the "the government should not be able to track my money flows!" argument. Might makes right, basically. Instead, focus your energy on legally constraining the use of that data to conform to principles of reasonable freedom and dignity. That is the only approach that will work, IMO.

walterbell 8y ago
How about $370 BILLION dollars laundered through one bank? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangs https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico...
crwalker 8y ago
I started reading this with strong disagreement but ended with complete agreement. Which organizations (esp. in bay area) are most effectively advocating for data ethics (including freedom, dignity, privacy)? EFF.org? I am looking for organizations focused on a charter of rights and responsibilities for software providers, data processors, etc. We've been terrible at self-regulating as an industry, which is absolutely begging for onerous regulations.
conanbatt 8y ago
Argentina is amidst a potential crisis right now, and one interesting concept I heard was that the only reason it hasnt exploded yet, is that millenials are not prepared to handle with bank runs. They haven't seen one yet and take attitudes that make it easy for the government to keep its overreach. I cant speak for australia, but if in argentina they made purchases over 10k illegal, it would be impossible to buy property, as they are only made in cash. Yes, lots if not most of money held in cash or similars has some stink, but its a stink made up by the government. I assure you tax evasion explains the vast majority of cash reserves and that is the reason why the government will always try to cruch on cash: to increase its revenues. Privacy is not a legitimate defense, but government overreach is not a legitimate attack. Who would you rather win? They guy that avoided taxes or the government that already taxes 28% of GDP?

pjc50 8y ago

So, two questions: - how many purely above board transactions of this value are there to be affected by this? - if people are to insist on financial anonymity, how is the tax burden to be distributed fairly?

seem_2211 8y ago
Yep - easy to have a visceral response to this change (how dare they cut down on my civil liberties!) but what sort of above board thing would you need to hand $10,000 over for? The only real example I can think of is buying a car, and even then, that's not that likely, that you'll use cash. Also how do you even get out $10,000? Most ATMs and banks have fairly low withdrawal limits.
- michaelmrose 8y ago
  Have you considered inflation?
- balabaster 8y ago
  Car dealerships often given huge discounts for cash purchases. So purchasing a car with cash is actually more likely than you give credit for. As for getting out $10,000 you'd usually need to go into a teller with at least a couple of days notice to withdraw that kind of cash. It's easy to do, if not exactly the most convenient. Getting money out of a bank isn't restricted to ATMs or debit card use. It's your money, the bank is just borrowing it from you to increase their spending power to increase their own profits and charging you for the benefit. It's a total coup: When you put money in your account, you're paying them for the privilege of lending them your money to so they can make further profits. You're still entitled to it back when you want it, in whatever forms the bank are capable of providing, up to and including cash.
  - scrooched_moose 8y ago
    Isn't paying "cash" for a car a just shorthand for "money up front, no credit cards or loans"? I don't personally know anyone who's taken $20,000 cash into a dealer for a car, they all pay by check which is still allowed: > It means transactions over $10,000 will have to be made through an electronic payment system or cheque when purchasing goods or services.

majortennis 8y ago

Australia tax things like cigarettes massively. I think any black market tobacco is because of their excessive taxing

ShorsHammer 8y ago
Low-key prohibition.
Raphmedia 8y ago
Taxing something you can grow in your own yard will always cause a black market.

elvirs 8y ago

so how many of you who is opppsing this has paid for or sold something in cash amount larger than 10k? Other than buying a used vehicle I dont think regular people engage in large cash transactions. While tons of untaxed money changes hands between rich crooks to buy and sell valuable items bypassing any taxation or tracing. Before you start advocating for rich crooks, think again what is in it for you that you want to fight for it so bad

sunir 8y ago
33 years ago... We used to use cash receipts from our convenience store to resupply at the cash and carry. It wasn’t uncommon. I saw transactions in high figures often from my fellow customers. Not sure how common it is now.
- elvirs 8y ago
  33 years ago cash may have been the fastest safest and easiest for of payment compared to today when there is so many fast, convenient and low fee payment options available. when a new legislation is passed the idea is to serve the needs of people 5-10 years from now, not 30 years ago.
alistairSH 8y ago
Stop thinking about individual consumers, who may or may not have $10k+ transactions very frequently. Instead, think of small businesses. They regularly have the opportunity to have large transactions. Vehicles, livestock, capital equipment.
- mperham 8y ago
  And they use checks, bank transfers, etc for those transactions. Not cash.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    Exactly. What business owner is going to entrust huge amounts of cash to staff if they don't have to, or aren't going through cash to keep it off the books?

balabaster 8y ago

Is this a bid by Credit Card companies to force everyone to pay them, or so that when you step out of line they can control you by controlling your access to resources? Either way, impeding your ability to purchase things in any manner you (and your vendor or customer) see fit isn't okay by me.

tdb7893 8y ago
It's to stop black markets. There are very few legitimate cash transactions over 10k as few people have that much in cash and cash transactions that big are very cumbersome.
- nasalgoat 8y ago
  I collect pinball machines and they are regularly over $10,000 for the highly-sought titles. Unlike a car which needs to be registered, they are "cash and carry" items and accepting any form of payment other than cash is risky (paypal? cheque? I think not). It's like buying stuff at a garage sale with a credit card. Ridiculous.
  - tdb7893 8y ago
    "Transactions with financial institutions or consumer to consumer non-business transactions will not be affected" so my interpretation is that your use case doesn't apply but I'm not sure

hnaccy 8y ago

The state will always seek more control over the individual, this is the state's MO. There is a slope and it's very slippery.

pmontra 8y ago

Italy has a limit of 3,000 Euro for cash payments. There is a table with the limits since the early '90s at https://www.codiceazienda.it/limite-contanti-tabella-riepilogativa/ https://www.codiceazienda.it/limite-contanti-tabella-riepilo... (reference to the law, dd/mm/yyyy, limit.) The first one is in Liras, about 10k Euro. My feeling is that it did little to achieve the desired result at least about money laundering. Apparently there are so many other ways to do that. For lawful expenses, checks (almost obsolete), bank transfers or credit cards are more convenient than getting cash at an ATM.

jaclaz 8y ago
To be picky, and as specified in the link, it has now (since 2016) a 3,000 Euro limit for cash payments, it had (and it was "pure folly" in practice) a limit of only 1,000 Euro in 2012-2015. JFYI, I remember that circa 2013 I had to make a particular payment to a Government Administration (only possible via the Post Office - Bollettino Postale) of around 1,200 Euro. The Post Office wouldn't accept cash or a credit card, only a particular kind of cheque (Assegno Circolare) emitted directly from my bank. Of course this check had to be printed and the bank software had a limited printing length field for the payee, which was an extremely long name. The Post Office wouldn't accept any abbreviation/acronym, I went back and forth several times between bank and Post Office until finally a bank director came out with a key that allowed to print the cheque in a "condensed" font.

avar 8y ago

Aside from the "war on cash" angle covered in other comments, setting these types of limits to an arbitrary dollar amount is fundamentally unjust. The CTR limit of $10K in the US is well known, but when it was introduced in the 70s[1] $10K was the equivalent of around $65K in today's money. Similarly, inflation will guarantee if this is enacted Australians won't be able to buy something like a phone, fridge or a laptop in a few decades due to the relentless progress of inflation. A few decades after that they won't be able to buy their groceries for $10K. These types of laws effectively outlaw cash entirely, they just have a time delay until they come into full effect. 1. https://repositorio.comillas.edu/rest/bitstreams/38908/retrieve https://repositorio.comillas.edu/rest/bitstreams/38908/retri...

zwily 8y ago
I think that’s the point. Governments would prefer cash just didn’t exist.
- InitialLastName 8y ago
  Interestingly, governments also make money on cash existing; every moment's inflation that isn't realized by that cash is money in the government's pocket.
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    Not to mention all the cash that goes missing.
  - helianer 8y ago
    They will, of course, make their seinorage whether they are physical notes/coins, or added to the money supply via some bits on a disk.

Canada 8y ago

So, no more paying for things in Australia with more than $7500 USD? Brutal. Pretty soon it won't be legal to even pay your rent with cash. As far as I know various $10,000 reporting laws started in the 1970s. That's more than $60,000 in today's money. Have these limits ever been adjusted for inflation in any country?

Rebelgecko 8y ago
I think in the US the limit actually went lower. At the very least, multiple $9k transactions set off some flags
- fomojola 8y ago
  That's just the structuring detection: the limit is $10000 but most financial institutions have some form of check for structuring or smurfing (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuring). One payment under the limit probably won't trigger it, but multiple will. Every couple of years there is a story about some small business owner who draws the ire of some government agency because they make multiple deposits under 10k.
- tialaramex 8y ago
  Making several smaller payments in order to sidestep reporting requirements is called "structuring" and, duh, is illegal. In other news: Grabbing another person's hand and using it to slap them in the face is actually still just you committing assault.

lr 8y ago

I think both the US and Australia (and probably other countries), should just do away with the $50 and $100 bills. It becomes a lot more inconvenient if you have to carry around 5 times as many briefcases of cash for illegal transactions.

callumjones 8y ago
If you're going to do illegal stuff, I don't think carrying around a lot cash if going to weigh too heavily on your mind. You're either going to carry it in a car or have a person carry it for you.
stronglikedan 8y ago
You do realize that there are large legal transactions that should be allowed to be made without privacy violations, don't you?
- maxk42 8y ago
  ... or wheelbarrows

grey-area 8y ago

Physical currency is going away in our lifetimes. What it is replaced by (digital cash owned by governments, corporate scrip, independent decentralised currencies) is up for debate, but its demise is not. Physical currency is controlled by governments, since it is expensive to produce and distribute, and network-connected payments are becoming more and more prevalent, it is inevitable that at some point the cost benefit ratio becomes untenable for governments and they remove this option. If you fight for its existence against the government which claims sole jurisdiction over it in the first place, you're fighting yesterday's war, and doomed to lose, better instead to imagine a different future based on digital currencies (of whatever stripe). I'm not keen on bitcoin et al, but the future is clearly not in physical tokens which represent fixed denominations of currency. If you were starting a currency today, would you start with cash?

ddebernardy 8y ago
Cash is the only way to keep one's spending private. (Anything else involves some kind of ID which, even if anonymous, can be traced back to you eventually.)
- jerkstate 8y ago
  well, there's also Monero
stronglikedan 8y ago
> Physical currency is going away in our lifetimes. I don't think so. There are plenty of people that like to hoard their physical currency. There are plenty of people that don't trust "digital" currency (or other people having control of their money). I think it will be many decades before physical currency goes away - if it ever does.
- grey-area 8y ago
  Decades is within our lifetime for most of us, this change is accelerating quicker in some countries than others (I suspect the US is behind in this respect). Some countries in Europe are actively considering phasing out cash in the decades to come. Hoarding physical currency for a sense of control is misguided; someone else controls the value of that physical money too, and there is a policy of inflation. It really is no different to digital currency in terms of control over value. Buy gold or land if you want to hoard (which each have their own problems), and use barter if you want to escape detection.

TomK32 8y ago

How about publishing all government transactions, excluding salaries if we must. If that works out well we can move on to publishing all transactions over a certain threshold (over a certain timeframe so you can't split the transactions). And publish all transactions that go to certain countries on black or grey lists. Limiting cash transaction is a okay thing be there's much bigger fish to catch, if only politics meant it seriously.

thatcat 8y ago
>excluding salaries Salaries are the most important transaction to monitor as they represent a recurring expense and easily become inflated in the government sector. Tax payers have a right to know what they pay for and how much it costs. What reason are you using to justify publishing private transactions?
- TomK32 8y ago
  > excluding salaries _if we must_ My view might be biased as I live in Austria which is well-know for government subsidies and funding. And that includes gold handshakes to send 50 yr-olds into early retirement. WHY THE FUCK!?! Anyways, my point being: Instead of outlawing big cash payments (hard to achieve in my eyes) the government has a lot of opportunities where it can show the transparency needed to re-establish trust from the plebs (sorry, citizens). I'd see publishing public transactions as a first step and private ones as a second step. I mean, all we know about that dutch-irish sandwich is fairly limited, but if those transactions had been public early on some data scientist would have said "oh, that looks funny".
squidfood 8y ago
U.S. government salaries are publicly available. Google and you can get a search tool and find the salary for any employee.

wemdyjreichert 8y ago

It's not just the "war on cash". This "PAYG" thing is screwing over taxpayers. They could otherwise invest that money, make a return, then divest before the end of the year, earning a small profit. This robs them of that right so the government can instead. Disgusting.

slagfart 8y ago
Credit is honestly cheap enough that, if you really wanted to invest money that is a liability from the second you earn it, you could. All other things being equal, if the government earns the money upfront instead of having to wait, tax rates can decrease slightly for the same amount of income. I live in a PAYG country, and given higher rates of tax-default and tax-stress in non-PAYG countries, I prefer PAYG.

michaelmrose 8y ago

Some while back a bank ceo floated the idea of negative interest rates for consumer deposits. Not negative as in less than inflation but literally negative. If banks are allowed to kill the utility of transacting business with cash I would fully expect the amount of money sucked out of the economy by the banking sector to increase in fees to hold and transfer money. Cash transaction are a hard break on how asinine you can be without your customers deciding to do business with nobody.

JTbane 8y ago

The so-called 'war on cash' seems to be progressing nicely. Don't the bankers know that this will only make cryptocurrency more attractive to those who want privacy?

mywittyname 8y ago
> Don't the bankers know that this will only make cryptocurrency more attractive to those who want privacy? Yes they do, that's why they've become so heavily invested in it over the past few years. They can force onto normal people these absurd limits on the use cash, while controlling the most viable alternate transaction method. So, people in both legal and illicit businesses need the bankers.

jacquesm 8y ago

The best thing they could do to get people not to use cash for legal transactions is to increase the interest rates. People doing illegal transactions will just use a substitute.

newscracker 8y ago

Any push for eliminating cash is just another version of the nonsensical "if you have nothing to hide..." argument all over again to curb freedoms. > If we are going to refer to bank payments as ‘cashless’, we should then refer to cash payments as ‘bankless’. Because that’s what cash is, and right now it is the only thing standing between us and a completely privatised money system. [1] For those who are arguing about an inevitable future where cash won't exist, I'll just say that people will find other ways to transact (like barter, cryptocurrency, shadow currencies). And those will be for legal purposes and illegal purposes, depending on the people and the situation. Blanket assumptions of crime and illegal activities with cash are extremely naïve. [1]: https://aeon.co/essays/if-plastic-replaces-cash-much-that-is-good-will-be-lost https://aeon.co/essays/if-plastic-replaces-cash-much-that-is...

no_identd 8y ago

The problems with this go a lot deeper than most people realize, but I can't summarize them here. I strongly recommend reading the following paper to understand the importance of cash: http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue80/Huber80.pdf http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue80/Huber80.pdf Huber, Joseph - Split-circuit reserve banking - functioning, dysfunctions and future perspectives Abstract: "This paper first provides a detailed outline of how the present money system works. This then serves as a backdrop to discuss a number of orthodox fallacies and heterodox flaws in money theory, followed by a summary of the dysfunctions of split-circuit reserve banking and a brief outlook on the perspective of a single-circuit sovereign money system." Keywords: monetary economics, money theory, credit creation, banking theory, fractional reserve banking, monetary policy, monetary reform One may find comments on the paper here: https://rwer.wordpress.com/comments-on-rwer-issue-no-80/ https://rwer.wordpress.com/comments-on-rwer-issue-no-80/