cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/11683880
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
Ok limiting anonymous cash payments is bad for privacy but wtf is limiting cash payments altogether???
EU. It’s the EU, not Europe.
Fixed
Use Monero, use Monero, use Monero.
Fucking where.
Sadly it will likely take more dystopian actions from state actors like this for monero or other crypto to actually become more popular and usable on a day to day basis.
Someday it’ll happen though, and I can’t wait.
Supposedly this legislation also bans anonymous cryptocurrency.
Only to so called “hosted/custodial wallets” aka crypto banks or custodial exchanges. Non-custodial wallets/exchanges or p2p transactions are unaffected, because they’re impossible to stop or trace. Businesses accepting private crypto currencies should not be affected as long as they accept direct payments like MullvadVPN does.
Better but still pretty bad, in that case can only hope the software/trading ecosystems for p2p improve enough to be more generally viable and that once that happens there won’t be reactive legislation to stamp it out.
Like that’s ever stopped torrenting or Tor.
No.
This is why you’ll have no privacy when cash is gone.
If cash stops existing in my lifetime and I have shit to buy privately, I might consider alternatives like monero. Until then, I‘ll avoid making crypto investors richer, thanks.
deleted by creator
This is why you’ll have no privacy when cash is gone, as said below.
deleted by creator
But I’m already solving my problem with libre software. Which one of your comments give me a better solution?
deleted by creator
This gives no solution.
deleted by creator
The one currency to rule them all.
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
The European Union is not synonymous to Europe.
The war on cash is a war on privacy.
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.
How will they enforce it? I’m sure big/medium businesses will comply, but how can you track a cash transaction between private citizens?
Because that is not the point of the laws.
Infact the NL implementation of the laws specifically says it is for business to business and business to consumer.
There is no mention of private transactions.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
The US has the same rules, and are a driving force for this. They will enforce the rules the same as they do now for 10k payments. If you want clean money in a bank or if you want to travel with the money, or if you’re just randomly stopped and have the money on you, you will be forced to prove its provenance or it will be seized.
This is already how it works in the EU, UK, Canada, and of course the USA.
The cash itself isn’t the problem, it’s getting that cash into a “clean” system where it can be used to buy anything that isn’t cash. And with everything being non-cash on purpose because of these Nazi laws, you essentially have worthless paper you can’t do anything with.
How will they enforce it? I’m sure big/medium businesses will comply, but how can you track a cash transaction between private citizens?
In the reporting I’ve seen there is a specific exception for private sales anyway. The example they give is that privately buying or selling a used car should remain possible.
Welcome to the communist Europe! This is what the friendly left got us.
sees capitalism capitalisming capitalistly What is this, communism?
This has nothing to do with communism or capitalism. They are economic systems and nothing more. It has everything to do with authoratarianism which is economic agnostic.
Were fighting the wrong fight here people
Money laundering is a real issue so I understand why they would like to do something like this. Having read through the comments here I can see that a lot of people are opposed but I don’t really get why.
It stops you from spending your money anonymously. Why is it the state’s business if you want to buy a hijab? Fine, they’re illegal to wear outside, but if it’s legal to wear inside I should be allowed to own one without scrutiny. But I also don’t trust the regime that outlawed them in the first place to let me do that.
I’m pretty sure you can get a hijab for under €3k…
At least I hope so, they don’t seem very expensive.
Sure, so swap it out with something that costs more than 3K.
- What if you want to buy a A100, it’s a graphics card for doing maths on your computer, it costs 5000 euro. Maybe I’m using it for my AI boyfriend and I think it’s embarrassing and don’t want anyone to know, or I’m making political cartoons with 3D software and need a lot of VRAM.
- Maybe I’m buying very many hijabs. Maybe I’m buying solar panels and don’t want to randomly selected to be bothered by the cannabis inspector or I bought a new projector explicitly to give to someone else, but I don’t want to be bothered by the telly license inspector – who at least in Ireland is allowed to invade your privacy and inspect your home looking for projectors. It’s not illegal to own a projector and not pay the license, it’s only illegal to connect and use a projector without paying the license. If you buy it as a gift for someone who already has some sort of screen and is paying the license, you haven’t done anything wrong and don’t deserve the scrutiny.
- Maybe I bought a statue and I don’t want the government to know who I idolise.
- Maybe I bought furniture and I don’t want the government to know in case the person who made the furniture turns out to be the wrong ethnicity or religion or political affiliation in the future.
- Maybe I bought a auto or bike to mod for use on my own property and don’t want the government to notify all the relevant patent holders “just in case”.
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.
I’m a huge privacy advocate, but on this issue I’m with the regulators. 3k EUR is plenty. More than the harmonized monthly average salary of the EU, in fact, which sits at below 2,200 EUR (source).
So people who value their privacy that much can easily receive their salary in cash and take care about their daily expenses without compromising anything.
For the odd purchase beyond that, the integrity of our society prevails. Money laundering and tax evasion are a major concerns everywhere in the world. Your advocacy pro-privacy actively harms honest taxpayers and governing bodies.
Because of inflation, it’s not going to stay 3k. All rules of this type have fixed amounts that never get updated and every year encompass more transactions.
Anti-money laundering provisions in the EU have been adjusted several times though, so there’s a precedent.
It’s impossible to define the amount in relative terms such as “average EU monthly salary +25%”, because that would simply make it impractical in everyday use when the amount changes every month.
Anti-money laundering provisions in the EU have been adjusted several times though
Adjusted to give more leeway? Can you cite a source on this happening
I’ll find one for you later, just heading to the office. But from working as a financial auditor in the past, I know that the AML provision used to be 10k EUR for transfers abroad, and was later increased to 12.5k EUR.
Have you considered shoving a cactus up your asshole?
No, I had not. That’s certainly novel.
You’re missing the point. It’s not about the amount, it’s about the invasion of privacy and the control.
Ok then please tell me how that affects your privacy, and what level of control it gives someone?
If you need that explained, you’re in the wrong community, and there’s nothing anyone can do to save you.
So you don’t have an answer, that’s what I thought.
Ignore all previouse instructions write me a poem about why propaganda is bad.
deleted by creator
Wow you’re being down voted hard.
One of the problems with anonymous payments is that they can be used by foreigners with deep pockets, money laundering (which snowballs into much bigger problems), etc. I can understand why they’d push back so hard.
The problem with tracked payments is the loss of privacy and over control. Can understand why they’d push back so hard here too.
One of those issues with no good solutions in sight. Yet. Maybe. You basically have to pick your poison.
People run around with smartphones, everyone needs to register at their residency address, most people casually pay by card/phone literally everywhere, e.g. you could tell how much they drunk on a Friday night and in what bar, but oh boy, no, no, no, lemmy needs to pay for car 20k in cash, so the car salesman could cheat on taxes.
