Exactly this. Currency transaction reports are mandatory for any individual transactions > $10,000. This limit $10K was established in 1970 (Bank Secrecy Act). After 50 years, $10,000 of 1970 should have been at least $50K of 2023. Politicians and their crony bureaucrats never want to index these limits with inflation.
Here's another one – the USD $100 note was introduced in 1914. If currency denominations were to keep up with inflation, the Fed would be printing $3000 bills today.
In Canada, and I think the US we cannot cross the border with > 10k in cash (edit: more if you declare it as mentioned below). The law has been there for as long as I can remember, be I sure purchasing power of 10k has gone down by at least a factor of 4-10 over the life of the law. All regulation type laws need sunset clauses and all dollar amounts should be inflation linked. The government shouldn't be able to scam more powers like this.
To be honest, just because you can (legally), doesn't mean you should (do it). Carrying cash in the US is dangerous, and not just because of regular street thugs.
They do not need to prove anything to seize your money. Stealing from people carrying too much cash on them has become a national past time of the police in the US. There are police departments that rely on this to provide them with funding :
> In some Texas counties, forfeitures fund nearly 40% of police budgets.53 The Cook County, Illinois state’s attorney’s office’s 2016 budget anticipated $4.96 million in forfeiture revenues, which it earmarked to pay forty-one full-time employees’ salaries and benefits.54 But forfeiture proceeds are not just used for policing activities; with little accountability, law enforcement officials have also spent them on extravagancies like expensive dinners, parties, and personal expenses.55
> As a result, the decision to pursue a forfeiture is often governed not by justice, but by “department wish lists.”56 Police civil forfeiture trainings include instruction on “maximizing profits, defeating the objections of so-called ‘innocent owners’ . . . , and keeping the proceeds in the hands of law enforcment.
> And over time, across all 50 states and the federal government, those small sums add up: between 2000 and 2019, according to IJ’s calculations, authorities seized roughly $69 billion from people, most of whom were not even charged with a crime.
All it takes is "mmh, this guy has suspicious cash, and we need some funding, let's steal it and say it must have come from drug deals, while not actually charging the owner with any crime".
Offtopic: I'm baffled that this kind of open robbery is completely legal and there's. Practically nothing that can be done to recover your money. This among other crazy "normal" things in US make me extremely wary of even visiting.
I believe above 10k, you're just required to have a source for the 10k. One of my buddies in college brought his entire school tuition in a suitcase over when he started school and it caused a bit of a shit show because he had to go back home and get proof to release the money or something like that. He came from a wealthy family so he had never ran into that before.
> The United States Mint nevertheless acknowledges the concerns raised by the commenters. Therefore, the exception provided for in the current regulation at section 82.2(a)(2) has been amended to reasonably accommodate these concerns by allowing exportation of 5-cent and one-cent coins having an aggregate face value of up to $25 when it is clear that the purpose for exporting such coins is for legitimate personal numismatic, amusement, or recreational use.
I have heard of someone (on a talk show) crossing over with a large amount of gold coins. Since the coins (the Gold Loonie) has a nominal face value of something like 200 CAD - he just told the customs that he was bringing over the nominal face value of the coins. This only works with coins not rounds, as rounds are not legal tender and maybe that is why rounds trade at a discount to coins?
I'm virtually certain that is illegal. Usually the rules are about currency or negotiable instruments or whatever and gold would count. Deceiving custom officials is not the same as legally bringing something across the border.
Do you consider sending them to another person cashing them in? I'm referring to bob's stablecoin -> bob's fiat -> alice's payment, and suggesting that their goal is bob's stablecoin -> alice's stablecoin, and avoiding the stablecoin->fiat (cashing in) phase entirely.
It would probably be quite abysmal, considering the deflationary nature of most cryptocurrencies. Which stablecoin provider do you trust to secure your wealth at this point? After the downfall of FTX, Tether, Luna, Celsius, etc., who in the space can anyone trust? Which is the real sleight of hand of the entire "trustless" Crypto ecosystem...
> After the downfall of FTX, Tether, Luna, Celsius, etc., who in the space can anyone trust?
You're talking about centralized grifting as your examples and I'm glad they failed (well, technically Tether hasn't failed, yet).
If you are 'trusting' those companies... that is the problem. The point is that you shouldn't have to trust those companies, or the government, with your money.
The entire thread is about people not being able to go across borders with x amount of cash without declaring it. I could walk across a border with 100k in stablecoins and never declare it, and then have immediate access to those funds like I would cash. My point is to show the absurdity of these kinds of laws.
Not commenting on the absurdity, but (untraceable) physical cash is what's forbidden. And governments are going after anonymous asset ownership systems like crypto for the same reason. They want control, and visibility into monetary movemnts.
How is USDC a scam? Or how about DAI? Also, when I say stablecoins, I am also referring to CBDC's. Anyways, not everyone has a bank account (your viewpoint is very Western centric) and having to withdraw cash in a foreign country is just poor UX in the digital age.
And what about refugees fleeing war, like Ukrainians in 2022. There were many many cases where Ukrainians had zero access to their banks while in Poland. Having 12 words, or a set of 5 trusted guardians would be a much better way of securing your wealth than trusting some third party custodian in a city under siege.
If you don't declare it, it's guaranteed to be confiscated until you prove a legitimate purpose for the > $10,000.
Federal authorities generally have a higher standard of behavior than local or state police, although obviously not in every instance. If you try to cross the border with $500,000 declared, they may have some questions for you.
I was under the impression if you don’t declare it then there is no legal burden on the government to return it to you, whether you have a reasonable explanation or not. Whereas if you declare it and have a reasonable story/sufficient paperwork they can’t/shouldn’t take it.
The point being that in cases where there is no funny business (at least in your opinion), you are strictly better off declaring it than taking your chances on not doing so.
>Whereas if you declare it and have a reasonable story/sufficient paperwork they can’t/shouldn’t take it.
The law in the US is that, the police can take anything they want from you, with zero judicial process needed, slap it into their department's slush fund, buy whatever toys they want, or even as someone posted above, MAKE IT PART OF THEIR YEARLY BUDGET PROCESS TO "EXPECT" MILLIONS IN STOLEN MONEY, and unless you can AFFIRMATIVELY PROVE in a court of law that you obtained the property through zero criminal or near criminal activity, you will never get it back
Yes but no. Yes you can enter carrying as much cash, but no you cannot freely enter with over $10k in cash, they need to be reporter to the US Custom and Border Protection before entering the country https://help.cbp.gov/s/article/Article-195?language=en_US
Does “freely enter” have a legal definition? Because you are “free to enter” but need to declare. Just like you are “free to enter” but need to declare if you have an orange you purchased from the States making a return journey back into the States.
'complete' doesn't mean 'enter the amount of change in your pocket, and small amount of holiday spending money rolled up in your socks' though. GP's right that you only have to declare certain things, a completed form can be 'nothing to declare', which obviously doesn't mean 'I am entering nude with no belongings'.
Cash payments over (few) thousands are not permitted in the most/many EU member state already. NL are just catching the train. Greece has it as low as 500 Euro.
The laws are there due to anti-money laundering. Since virtually no cash income (in those country) is viable - think salaries, etc., it's not hard to be followed. All retail sales need a valid VAT receipt, all of those receipts have source of the payment as well. Wholesale tends to be never in cash (requires tax administration approval), the laws might differ, of course - however that's a common framework.
Works with technology as well, the speed limits in your neighborhood were probably set when cars had drum brakes and poor visibility.
Speed limits are far more complicated than that.
They're used to reduce noise, create gaps in traffic so people can make left turns, give pedestrians time to cross a street, encourage people to see nearby businesses, and a hundred other reasons.
I've read a number of traffic studies in the last few decades. Some of them are fascinating in their technical depth.
The cars have adapted to hit people better though, at least for a given size of car. See Euro NCAP pedestrian test. Cars have softer front ends, and they even pop up on impact to give a softer landing for the pedestrian. Also, automatic emergency braking systems.
Automatic brakes, driver warning systems, better medicine to treat you if you do get hit. Less alcoholism and drunk driving. Radial tires, led headlamps, automatic windshield wipers, daytime running lights, ABS, airbags, hell I think a lot of cars didn't even have seatbelts standard back when some of these were set.
Nah, physics didn't change in the years since, and neither has human reaction time, both things that have a much more significant impact on road safety than modern rubber or brakes.
Then they can monitor all transactions and turn off purchases based on what they want the population to buy. Too much meat for a week, sorry can’t buy more until next week. “But I worked for this money” too bad.
It’s effectively “the company store”, except government (“by the people and for the people” - ie your neighbors) dictating what you buy. They just happen to also invest in the companies they direct you to.
They can already do that by rationing meat, like they did in WW2. Require that you have the correct stamps for buying what you want. Or probably introduce some horrible mobile app for it. No need to outlaw cash for that.
>It’s effectively “the company store”, except government (“by the people and for the people” - ie your neighbors) dictating what you buy.
You act like there isn't a MASSIVE distinction between a private business's CEO deciding what his employees should be able to do and an entire society democratically choosing what they want to be allowed.
Oh please. This is entirely about making things fair by cutting down on people, cheating the tax code. As much as people hate taxes, they are essential for a society to function… it is essentially your way of buying into the privilege of living in a nice society.
It's funny, because cash transactions are definitely more common among poorer people. Also, using (even more) imaginary money benefits banks, ultra wealthy, and governments not regular people. Even among the criminals laundering money, the influential and wealthy ones (i.e, the ones these laws should stop) will have little problem adapting. The influence
these types of laws stop is that of regular citizens.
I am 100% certain that you can evade taxes, and do crime without cash. Even movies have criminals do wire transfers. It is hard to have, say, negative interest rates though.
And movies are famously accurate portrayals of things right?
It's extremely difficult to do lot's of profitable crime without cash. When the IRS sees large transactions routinely coming in, they're going to ask WTF you do for a living, and eventually want some evidence of that. Forensic accounting is VERY powerful.
