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I can’t imagine a car dealer who would do anything but laugh if I bought a car north of €10k and suggested I wanted to pay in cash. I’m 100% sure they’d rather

I can’t imagine a car dealer who would do anything but laugh if I bought a car north of €10k 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.

zmgsabst 4y ago
“You can’t buy a car without permission” sounds tyrannical to me.
- sofixa 4y ago
  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?
  - zmgsabst 4y ago
    You can see Canada’s actions against the truckers or China’s frozen bank accounts for how these laws turn tyrannical in practice.
- alkonaut 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    If that's the case then there's no need for this regulation.
    - alkonaut 4y ago
      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 4y ago
        > 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 4y ago
        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 4y ago
        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 4y ago
        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 4y ago
    > 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 4y ago
      > 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 4y ago
        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 4y ago
    > 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 4y ago
      > 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 4y ago
        > 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/ https://sumsub.com/blog/money-laundering-vehicles/
- Canada 4y ago
  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.
mr_mitm 4y ago
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 4y ago
  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 €50 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 4y ago
  > 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
EthicalSimilar 4y ago
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 €10k 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 4y ago
> can’t imagine a car dealer who would do anything but laugh if I bought a car north of €10k 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 4y ago
  > 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.
  - Canada 4y ago
    Apologies for the late reply. You can't prove that in realtime without a trustee, which is just how things have been done forever. With all due respect, this is how it is in "advanced economies". Where are you personally from where you think anything other than cash provides instant, irreversable, and indusputable settlement in this case?

zmgsabst 4y ago

“You can’t buy a car without permission” sounds tyrannical to me.

sofixa 4y ago
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?
- zmgsabst 4y ago
  You can see Canada’s actions against the truckers or China’s frozen bank accounts for how these laws turn tyrannical in practice.
alkonaut 4y ago
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 4y ago
  If that's the case then there's no need for this regulation.
  - alkonaut 4y ago
    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 4y ago
      > 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 4y ago
        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 4y ago
        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 4y ago
      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 4y ago
  > 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 4y ago
    > 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 4y ago
      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 4y ago
  > 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 4y ago
    > 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 4y ago
      > 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/ https://sumsub.com/blog/money-laundering-vehicles/
Canada 4y ago
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.

mr_mitm 4y ago

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 4y ago
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 €50 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 4y ago
> 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

EthicalSimilar 4y ago

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 €10k 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 4y ago

> can’t imagine a car dealer who would do anything but laugh if I bought a car north of €10k 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 4y ago
> 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.
- Canada 4y ago
  Apologies for the late reply. You can't prove that in realtime without a trustee, which is just how things have been done forever. With all due respect, this is how it is in "advanced economies". Where are you personally from where you think anything other than cash provides instant, irreversable, and indusputable settlement in this case?