this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2024
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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

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Seems like your solution costs more than it brings to the budget and all that you're gaining is false sense of privacy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I am not proposing any new solution. Tax collection agencies across the European Union already audit businesses and it's a revenue generating activity.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

So you're fine with tax collection being ineffective, got it. All taxation is theft and so on, right?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Dude, I have talked to AI bots that are more intelligent than this

Tax collection is very effective. Extremely effective, even.

That's my whole point.