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
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.
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.
@youmaynotknow is spot on. But consider this a very basic primer on just a small fraction of privacy abuse by banks:
So there’s 22 privacy abuses by banks to get you started. And that just barely scratches the surface.
You can somewhat ignore paragraphs 15 and 23 in terms of privacy. OTOH privacy is hand-in-hand with control and paragraphs 15 & 23 reflect control being in the wrong hands.
Banks abuse our privacy in countless ways. This could fill a book. This policy amounts to forced banking. I boycott banks. Banks have us by the balls and they abuse that power. A bank recently told me (in effect) to fuck off if I don’t have a mobile phone number to give them.
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.
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.
It’s not impossible. Indexes are published. This is what they do with rent in places where rent is controlled. Landlords cannot increase rent more than an index. So they have to do the math. And in this case it’s not even a variable baseline like rent, it’s fixed, so the calculation can also be published so people need not do any math.
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.
I can’t but agree. 3k is more than enough to pay even for home stuff. You can buy plenty of things under 3k in a single purchase. And if you’re willing to buy further than that, then I’m sorry but you’ll need to put society first. If you’re willing to buy full cash a house, I’m gonna think you’re money laundering and you can go fuck yourself.
It seems it doesn’t apply to person-to-person payments, only commercial. So I guess you could still buy a house from individual with cash. Whether they’d be willing to deal with the cash is another question.
I don’t know if this applies to the entire EU, but home purchases need to be notarized. You can’t just transfer a deed for a house without the government knowing.
Yo dog I got ur house
Give it a few more years of inflation and 3000€ will pay for a week’s worth of groceries for a family of 3.
That’s net (take-home pay), not gross. Tax is high enough that you need to double that figure (€4,400) to get the gross pay. And just wait till you account for inflation, which the EU cash limits apparently fail to account for.
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.
“I’m a huge privacy advocate unless your privacy is worth more than 3000€”
Have you considered shoving a cactus up your asshole?
No, I had not. That’s certainly novel.