Well, for one, they control cash production
> It's not a lot of money, and given inflation, diminishingly so. This is targeted at law abiding smallholding farmers where roadside transactions are often done in cash and farmers everywhere have a lot of tax relief precisely because they provide food security for nations - and it's to the benefit of criminal networks to top it off. The architects of this policy are disgusting.
Do you have any actual example of that ? What transaction do small farmers need to do along roadside for thousands of eur ? As kid of small farmer I don't remember anything like that ever happening.
Mind you, this is a poor country. The middle class in the capital city can't even dream of making what these farmers make.
Same for livestock, butchering, services and so on.
In the EU you can transfer the money instantly using your phone.
Not that I agree with the ban but a lot of the issues people are discussing here are only relevant in the US (checks? lol.. what is this the 60s?)
Can you please not make shit up to be obsessed about?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_forfeiture#European_Unio...
How is that unreasonable and more importantly what does it have to do with the €3000 limit discussed in this thread?
Whether a conviction occurs in court is largely irrelevant, because it's in excess of the 3000 limit that this law actually puts in place, and therefore de jure illegal.
In the U.S., no conviction of the owner is even necessary, since the conviction is of the cash itself. This is likely coming to EU as well because it's a easy way for the enforcement state to increase its coffers and, in theory, stop money laundering.
I don't get it, do you not understand the difference between possessing a certain amount of cash and making a single payment over a certain amount in cash?
How do you make a logical leap from the latter to the former?
The way you read laws isn't how the enforcers need to read it. That isn't a US specific issue.
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=1acd50be-5237...
Any sources which would substantiate this claim?
- hay / feed delivery
- combine/equipment rental
- equipment resale
- livestock
- farm vehicle sales / repair
It's probably fine, and I hear you can eat bugs.
It's illegal to pay minimum wage in cash, due to employers abusing and underpaying vulnerable people. (Any amount over the minimum wage can be paid cash, but there has to be a bank payment made for at least the minimum wage.)
Source: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/aanpak-schijnconstr...
> - hay / feed delivery
> - combine/equipment rental
> - livestock
> - farm vehicle sales / repair
B2B transactions like that are done by billing. The other side wouldn't normally be very receptive to a cash payment.
Interesting. In France, you can ask for your wages to be paid cash, but only if it's not more than €1500. Minimum wage as of May 1st 2023 is €1383.08.
All of the above are very likely done electronically in Netherlands.
Denmark has an even lower limit (€2700) and there has been no problems with this. Denmark no longer supports payments using checks.
I've never heard of anybody being paid wages in cash in Denmark. It's so uncommon that the Danish IRS even had to explain it is actually possible to do so.
Not that I agree with this ban. I really don’t but focusing on farmers specifically is very strange when farming is so heavily commercialized, especially in the Netherlands.
For paper mails some shelters allow for picking up post and in some countries you can get the mail as "Poste Restante" (i.e. pick up at post office).
But yeah, if you’re not a citizen and don’t live in the EU it might be tricky (then again AFAIK bringing large amounts of cash from a third country is not that straightforward either).
What does this have to do with Dutch farmers, though?
This is as old as countries themselves. You must be intellectually dishonest to ignore these historically crucial patterns.
Also, again, how is this specifically harming farmers more than anyone else?
So sounds like exactly the kind of transaction this law is supposed to block. working as intended.
While each transaction might be <3000, on a good weekend, I could see it totaling to be over that amount. At this point, would it be illegal for the farmer to show up to his bank to deposit 3001? Does the farmer now need to waste time to make 2 separate trips to make each deposit < 3000? Maybe take the spouse and kids along so they each make a smaller deposit? Does this require visiting multiple branches?
In the US, that's called structuring and will result in some very uncomfortable conversations.
How would supermarket function otherwise?
The farmer isn't an individual, it's a business as well.
Only it’s very weird to just assume that this might apply to bank deposits…
Is it? I find it weird you think so. If you and I exchange > 3000 between us, nobody will ever know, so the law is pointless. The one place that this can be policed is at the bank level. You're assumption seems to be that if you gave me 3000, I'd just keep it in cash.
In the US, if you make a deposit > $10,000, the bank is regulated to report it. It doesn't matter why you are making that deposit, it gets reported. Applying the same thing to Euro markets only seems natural.
Edit: Actually, even car dealerships have to report someone showing up to buy a car with >$10,000 in cash as well.
We might focus on the law itself and not some hypothetical situation.
> nobody will ever know, so the law is pointless.
You can’t sign a contract for anything worth more than €3000 if you want to pay in cash. If you want to declare your income, pay taxes, prove that you obtained the money legally when you later want to deposit it to an bank, during a tax audit etc. Of course it won’t affect transactions which are already done illegally so it depends on what do you mean by ‘pointless’.
The $10k limit is also a thing in Europe, the exact amount varies by state though (I think).
well, there might be one small issue!
how can you 'show you sold products'? after all, you sold them!!
isn't the cash sufficient to show you sold products? hasn't it been sufficient for thousands of years?
Ad hominem attack but without any additional details to support your assertion?
>> You can deposit whatever amount you want into your bank account, they just might ask questions regarding where the money came from, and if you show that you sold products there's zero issues.
The original assertion was that you'd need to 'show that you sold products'.. to the bank, not your accountant... rather more difficult than it appears at first blush.
Also have you heard about bookeping? It’s also a thing that has existed for thousands of years.
To sum up, what is the standard of records that the bank will accept? Is there one?
does the bank say, "we see you wrote that you sold 20 boxes of produce on Saturday"
Buy yeah, some banks in the EU might be overzealous and small/medium businesses can often run into issues related to their idiotic fraud prevention systems. But I don’t see how is that an issue with the system itself and not with the implementation.
They have the euro as do most countries in the EU so they don't control cash production.
You misunderstand.
We are talking hard paper cash here. It might help if we quote a translated excerpt here :
This practice is now being abolished by the introduction of Sec. 16a GwG. From 1 April 2023, it will only be possible to purchase real estate using means of payment other than cash, crypto assets, gold, platinum or precious stones. All parties to the transaction are required to present satisfactory proof of payment, for example a payment confirmation from a financial institution.
(source of excerpt https://www.gvw.com/en/news/blog/detail/prohibition-on-cash-...)
You can still do a bank transfer. The point is the money has to pass though a "real" financial institution.
Electronic transfers such as ACH would be allowed.
One of my banks forbids making bank transfers of over 10,000 EUR. The other is not far behind.
Even then, sometimes they simply decide that they're not going to allow you to make bank transfers to certain perfectly legitimate accounts. There is no way to override that.
For the past couple of days I've been trying to set up an automatic monthly transfer for paying my rent and my bank is not allowing me because it's "exceeding the allowable daily limit", even though I haven't done any transfers or significant payments lately, and my rent is way below the 10,000 EUR limit.
You also can't withdraw large sums of money easily.
Furthermore, even when they allow these large transfers (which presumably would require you to physically visit a branch which might be in a different country or even continent), it's not uncommon to charge a not insignificant percentage of that money as a fee. This is significantly more common for large transfers than for small ones.
Large inbound transfers can be even more of a hassle, as banks often require you to provide documents justifying why you're receiving that money, which not only might be difficult in some cases (even when you're not doing anything illegal), but also invades your privacy and can be a significant security risk in some situations.
All of this basically makes banks a prison for your money, which not even you can access easily.
And besides, all that is assuming that you are even able to open a bank account.
There are many reasons for why opening a bank account is hard or even impossible in many cases.
And believe me, this doesn't happen in just one or two banks, it's quite common procedure in practically every bank, and increasingly so.
It's in the two countries in Europe where I've lived.
> if I call my bank and tell them I need to transfer 500,000 to buy a house they will allow it
What you're saying is not possible in the banks I've used.
To buy houses, I've had to set up appointments and physically go to the central office of one of the banks, and to a local branch of another. They provided me with a special bank-issued cheque for the transaction.
In one of the cases, this required me to travel to another country just for this purpose.
It was a significant hassle and even then I was lucky that this was in an adjacent country. It could have easily been in the other side of the world.
> The limit is there is to prevent fraud.
Right... fraud... of course!
Is that why one of the banks only allows me to set up a 5 digit password (yes, only numbers) to access my account? And why the other one only allows me to set up a 6 digit password (again, only numbers)?
Is that also why they require me to dictate this same password (and other ones) over the phone when I want to make a large transaction? So that other people who are physically near me can hear the passwords easily?
And that's even assuming I typed their phone number correctly in my phone, otherwise I would be giving my passwords to strangers!
Look, I really don't care if it's fraud, or money laundering laws, or because the Pope mandated it.
I've never been a victim of fraud, it's extremely unlikely for me to ever be a victim of fraud in the future, I'm not doing anything illegal and it's my money.
There are many other ways to deal with fraud, such as having most of the money locked (e.g. in a separate account, with more restrictions or delays), providing notifications, using two-factor authentication, calling the customers to confirm the transaction, etc, etc.
And yes, I know in many banks they also do a subset of these, but even then the restrictions are still there.
I'm sorry, but fraud alone does not explain what's happening, unless the banks are extremely incompetent (and yes, it's quite possible that they are).
Regardless, the end result is the same: I simply cannot use my money easily, period.
My friend worked for an insurance company that would regularly receive double digit thousands cash payments on policies from pot farms because they can't have bank accounts.
You're paying 3000 Euro for eggs?
Paying your various-shades-of-grey farmhands is another story.
And that's what farmers are annoyed at. If they don't deposit it, they can "forget" to report the income themselves, and cheat the tax man.
Are these migrants frequently making cash payments in excess of €3000?
Also, what kind of illegal immigrant rents a >€3000/month home?
It's not necessarily easy for migrants to open bank accounts. Sometimes it's even impossible.
Even for me, I assure you that opening a bank account would not be easy (or maybe even possible) due to stricter requirements in recent years, even though I've never done anything illegal (to my knowledge) and I'm not a migrant.
I know this because I've looked into many banks with the intention of opening an account and the requirements are all similar between them. This is in two different European countries.
And well, for the past couple of days I've been trying to set up an automatic monthly bank transfer for my rent and my bank is not allowing me because it's "exceeding the daily allowable limit", even though it's way below the daily allowable limit that I've ran into multiple times for normal bank transfers.
So there's that.
> Also, what kind of illegal immigrant rents a >€3000/month home?
Rents have gone up considerably in European capitals and consider that multiple immigrant families can live under the same (larger) roof.
Inflation will also eat up these limits over time, as governments almost never increase cash limits according to inflation (even though they do it for many, many other things).
Also, the limits are lower in some countries (500 EUR in Greece, 1000 EUR in Spain). I know for a fact that it's almost impossible to get a decent place in the center of Madrid for less than 1000 EUR nowadays.
But drug wholesalers only exist thanks to low and intermediate drug dealers.
Getting around the limitations of cash is no problem for those on the inside. Just like tax havens are only an option for the super wealthy who wouldn't really need them in the first place.
Can you explain why this alone isn't a win?
Farmers are declaring their own tax relief.
Where (in NL) do you find farmers who routinely need to accept >3k in cash and are (somehow?) unable to accept electronic payments? Pretty much everyone everywhere can accept at least one form of electronic payments. That's a legal requirement for any business in Belgium, and I can't imagine the Dutch being that far behind on that ...
Even if you can't take card or contactless payments or apps, you can do instant bank transfers with most banks within the EU ("Instant Payments"), either free of charge or pretty cheap. There's no excuse for being unable to accept non-cash money. There are, however, plenty of reasons to be unwilling, but that's another story.
That sounds pretty expensive and a lot of "real food" for the average person.
And if it is a business transaction sounds like a suspicious business transaction.
The measures used to keep various peasant and serf classes under control were so extreme in history because if they became able to exercise that power the social order was overturned.
Most EU nations are setting up instant payment systems for these and other "informal" use cases. In Sweden you can buy strawberries at a sidewalk stall and pay through Swish [0]. I should also stress that, no matter how bad Swedish inflation is at the moment, it's very unlikely that you will ever spend >3k EUR (about 35k SEK) on strawberries :)
A black market for cash already exists. The people who buy it are called money launderers.
If you want the convenience of a government backed currency you’ll need to do so digitally which makes fraud investigation a lot easier. Don’t like it? Bad luck. This is where every fair economy is heading.
The results will be known sooner or later.
The problem with black markets is they function because the money they trade in has real world value. If you taint significant sums so they can't be used to buy assets (3k is a lot of money for a single transaction, thanks) you make it harder to benefit from crime.
And I don't understand why you're explicitly defending tax evading smallholders. Because farms? Even smallholders can declare and deduct expenses.
On your first point, some countries allow asylum seekers to work, and even if they don't, some tax systems allow them to declare income even if they're not really allowed to have any. I'm definitely in favour of making sure everyone works to the same rule, so everyone can live honestly.
Cash-in-hand work has to die.
It's not a lot of money, and given inflation, diminishingly so. This is targeted at law abiding smallholding farmers where roadside transactions are often done in cash and farmers everywhere have a lot of tax relief precisely because they provide food security for nations - and it's to the benefit of criminal networks to top it off. The architects of this policy are disgusting.