> 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

> 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.