The war on cash is a war on privacy.
this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2024
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Privacy
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Chat control was beat. This can be too. Contact your MEP, let them know this issue is important to you: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/home
Chat control wasn't beat, it was postponed. The proposal will be back.
We beat it last time.
It will come back until we don't.
So we keep coming back.
EU. It's the EU, not Europe.
Fixed
The European Union is not synonymous to Europe.
Never underestimate the power of multiple legal anonymous cash payment spread out over time.
Actually cash payment in Europe is not a new problem. The problem is to obtain the cash in the first place. Try to walk into your bank and ask, say 20k€ in cash: you will be subjected to what amounts to a strict interrogation in which you'll be asked why you need it, who will receive it, etc. Nevermind withdrawing it from an ATM of course...
That and the Gestapo-esque KYC rules banks have to implement, and forced banking has effectively been a thing in Europe for a couple decades now.
Me, I withdraw the weekly limit from my ATM, week in and week out. Been doing it for years. When I need to pay for something I don't want banks or the state to know about, I have a big buffer of cash in my safe to draw from.
This is what you have to do in free countries now. It don't feel too free when you actually try to exercise you freedom to do whatever you please with your own fucking money...
I bought a car for 30k cash in Europe very recently and received mone of these heartaches.
It was really easy, I withdrew my money, drove to te dealership. Handed him a bag of money, which he counted. He then gave me a receipt for €25,350 and my car.
Yes, and all they had to do to make it legal is to verify your identity, which they did.
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I knew a guy who didn't even have a bank account. He only accepted cash.
Good luck finding a job where your employer accepts to pay you in cash or check in Europe.
This depends on the industry. Domestic workers and builders are often paid in cash in Europe. Belgium even writes it in law that cash wages are prohibited if you work in an industry where that is uncommon. Strange (and discriminatory) law, but indeed white collar workers are legally blocked from cash payment while other industries are grandfathered.
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Use Monero, use Monero, use Monero.
"Cash is outlawed. Let's use a Ponzi scheme instead."
Hmm, you know what? Somehow I think the solution is neither of those things.
Proprietary money is a scam but Monero is libre software, private.
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Ok limiting anonymous cash payments is bad for privacy but wtf is limiting cash payments altogether???
Anonymity is very important.
Here's a example why, that recently happened to a workmate:
He applied for a mortgage to buy a house. The application was denied 3 times, despite his having been employed at the same place for 20 years, paid all his bills on time and never received so much as a parking ticket. Finally, after insisting heavily and threatening to sue, his bank provided the reason why: his purchasing habits included too much alcohol.
Or said another way: the bank watched what he purchased when doing his groceries for years and quietly classified him as a wino and potential deadbeat.
I can tell you, when I do my groceries, and back when I still smoked, I never paid for alcohol or tobacco with anything other than cash, for that very reason. The only things I pay for with plastic paint the portrait of a boring working stiff with no habits out of the ordinary. For the rest, it's cash-only.
And if you want another example of why anonymity is important: a few years ago, I sought the help of an underground surgeon to perform a certain type of surgery on me that my stupid doctors here refused to perform, despite my quality of life going to shit (it's a long story...)
Guess what: underground surgeons don't take credit cards. The man changed my life for the better but I certainly don't want my local health insurance to know about it. Was it illegal? Hell yes. Was it justified? Hell yes. Legal and right are two different things.
And similarly, I expected many women post Roe v. Wade would like to have the opportunity to get an abortion out of state anonymously without going to jail.
That's why anonymous payments are essential: they are the last rampart between you and unjust laws and prejudice.
I didn't say anything against anonymity. It is very important for me. It's just fighting anonymity makes sense and everyone here knows why the government does it but fighting cash itself is kinda hilarious. That's what I wanted to point out. Killing it will kill several core human rights. Also that "purchase habits" thing is highly illegal here where I live afaik and I can only imagine how crucial anonymity is in "worse" countries. Tbh sometimes I can't even believe what people say about their countries. It's going beyond fantasy at this point.
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How will they enforce it? I'm sure big/medium businesses will comply, but how can you track a cash transaction between private citizens?
Furthermore in the country where I live (Italy, one of EU founding members) more than 60% of independent professionals (partite iva) evade/elude taxes in some way or another, and it's very common (so common that every Italian experienced it many times in their lives, me included) for small businesses and professionals to offer you a slight discount if you pay cash under the table (no receipt, so no taxes) and, even if we have an entire police force dedicated to financial crimes, the submerged economy is just so big that they can't deal with it now, imagine when they'll have to arrest/fine everybody that accepts more than €3000 in cash.
What somebody writes on a piece of paper and what happens in the real world are 2 very distinct things, many stores in Italy don't accept credit cards even if it's against them law, and only a minuscule fraction of them gets fined.
The EU has extremely nazi-esque control on the private financial life of its citizens (the state monitors your bank account, to open a bank account you need to give every info about u in the future they'll ask for your DNA probably, if you withdraw/deposit a "suspect" amount of money our IRS will come after your ass, ane you need to prove your innocence basically guilty untill proven otherwise, ecc, there are a thousand examples, I'm sure EU citizens can relate) but I can't see how they'll be able to track pieces of paper.
TLDR I can't even see how they will be able to enforce this law, especially when we talk about small businesses/independent contractors, and the situation gets even funnier when its a transaction between 2 private individuals.
I've worked in many EU countries and the feeling I often got is that in Italy, we are more advanced in fighting tax evasion and elusion.
Keep in mind that in switzerland for example there is no cap to cash transaction
In Germany and Austria often is difficult to pay with card because they don't accept it
I've seen Russian in Vienna going to luxury stores with literally stacks of money
Enforceability varies depending on the scenario. Some countries have law that holds employers accountable for tax evaded by workers. Employers obviously won’t gamble, so they refuse to pay cash and cryptocurrency wages because they are scared shitless of being accountable for an employee’s evasion.
I demanded cryptocurrency payment and my employer refused on that basis. I intended to continue declaring it properly and just wanted a bit of freedom from bank dependency, but nothing could overcome the employer’s fears.
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Interestingly enough the €3k is, when converted to USD, almost exactly what I paid for, in cash, to buy my Street Triple a few weeks ago. I was weary of giving a ton of cash to some random stranger, and wanted to do a cashier's check. He didn't know what that was.
This makes me wonder, are cashier's checks considered cash under this rule in the EU?
I had to look up cashier's check and it does not sound familiar at all. But searching a bit further it is a thing that exists, seems to be called Bank Check around here, it's just kind of expensive to use.
It's much more usual to pay in cash or use an account transfer (SEPA transfer) which is usually free, but with the delay of the transfer one of the parties usually takes a risk.
This year, in relation to the rule the post is about, they also forced banks that were dragging their feet to start supporting instant transfers.
I don't ultimately know the answer to your question though. I suspect the banks have to ask you for the origin, as if you turned up with 10k in cash, but I couldn't find anything definitive in the time I was searching around.
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The point for me is that the government automatically seems to think that cash payments are for something illegal. And all of a sudden, the burden is on me to proof that it is not.
While technically speaking, paying with cash is a very legal way to pay and should not require any explanation at all. Nor should it be more difficult.
Of course, there is a limit, and I get that paying a 2 million dollar house in cash is reason to at least ask where that money came from. But 3000 dollars or 100000 are amounts of money that in my opinion do not deserve the same amount of checking.
A lot of random but legal stuff can be done with 10000 dollars of cash. And yes, sometimes you use cash because you don't want your identity known. Doesn't mean you are doing something illegal. If the government thinks it is illegal, they should open an investigation and proof it.
Instead they put the burden on you. Doesn't seem fair to me, and a limitation on my personal freedom to spend money however I like.
Not to mention, even things that are legal now, could be made illegal by governments to come, and dictators or oppressive regimes will have no problems with checking logs to see which assholes did something that goes against their values in the past. For that reason alone, governments should only be tracking the minimum amount of information they need.
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