cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/11683421
The EU has quietly imposed cash limits EU-wide:
- €3k limit on anonymous payments
- €10k limit regardless (link which also lists state-by-state limits).
From the jailed¹ article:
An EU-wide maximum limit of €10 000 is set for cash payments, which will make it harder for criminals to launder dirty money.
It will also strip dignity and autonomy from non-criminal adults, you nannying assholes!
In addition, according to the provisional agreement, obliged entities will need to identify and verify the identity of a person who carries out an occasional transaction in cash between €3 000 and €10 000.
The hunt for “money launderers” and “terrorists” is not likely meaningfully facilitated by depriving the privacy of people involved in small €3k transactions. It’s a bogus excuse for empowering a police surveillance state. It’s a shame how quietly this apparently happened. No news or chatter about it.
¹ the EU’s own website is an exclusive privacy-abusing Cloudflare site inaccessible several demographics of people. Sad that we need to rely on the website of a US library to get equitable access to official EU communication.
update
The Pirate party’s reaction is spot on. They also point out that cryptocurrency is affected. Which in the end amounts to forced banking.
#warOnCash
How are you going to audit cashless businesses that invoice one price and take another and how much is that going to cost? We’re talking about likely widespread issue that needs solving systemically, not with adhoc actions.
Dude, tax collection has been optimized for hundreds of years before we even had electronic money.
They even got Al Capone.
Money laundering is the opposite of tax evasion. If you don’t understand that those two things are not the same, then I can’t really help you.
All of you guys focus on some billionaires, mafia bosses etc but we’re talking about 3k/10k EUR limits.
I’m asking how do you audit cash-heavy businesses doing petty tax fraud cost effectively?
You weren’t asking anything. You were just lumping things together.
To audit tax fraud, just audit the books. If a restaurant is full on a Friday night, but the books show few sales, then you have your evidence.
If someone buys a new car and has a nice house, but claims their business is hardly making profit, then the tax authority can demand they explain the source of their income.
Again, this is how they got Al Capone 100 years ago.
Money laundering is much more difficult and it’s the opposite. Because the laundering restaurant can just write in the books that they sold 100 more cocktails on a Friday night, paid by cash. And they also pay the required tax on it.
To combat money laundering, you need to audit the customers of the establishment, which is why they want to reduce the usage of cash.
But instead of turning the EU into East Germany, we should just stop criminalizing vices and regulate that, which is the main source of dirty money.
