The U.S. government has not banned any large cash transactions, and hopefully it will not do so any time soon, but it sure has burdened large cash transactions with some heavy-duty reporting requirements.
For example, your bank is required to file a currency transaction report with the government for every deposit, withdrawal or exchange over $10,000 in cash.
Not only that, but if a bank "knows, suspects, or has reason to suspect" that a transaction involving at least $5,000 is "suspicious", then another report must be filled out. This second type of report is known as a suspicious activity report, and it is also filed with the government.
But the reporting does not stop there. As Jeff Schnepper explained in an article for MSN Money, if you are in business and you receive over $10,000 in cash in a single transaction you must report it to the IRS or you will go to prison.....
If you're in a business and receive more than $10,000 in cash from a single transaction, or from related transactions within a 12-month period, you have to file Form 8300 and report the buyer to the IRS. Don't file, and you go to jail.
The IRS isnt kidding. I had a client who was a dealer in Corvette sports cars. He told me he didnt have time to file the forms. I told him several times to file. He thought he knew better. He went to jail. So did his children who were involved in the business.
This is very, very serious.
Just because someone forgets to file a certain form with the IRS, that person can go do serious jail time?
Yes.
According to Schnepper, quite a few Americans have already received very substantial sentences for this kind of thing....
In fiscal 2004, the Internal Revenue Service initiated 1,789 criminal investigations. There were 1,304 indictments and 687 convictions -- and an 89.1% incarceration rate. The average sentence: 63 months.
In fiscal 2005, the IRS started 4,269 investigations, winning 2,406 indictments and 2,151 convictions and an 83% incarceration rate. Average sentence: 42 months.
The reality is that governments around the world are getting very, very sensitive about large amounts of cash and they are not messing around.
They don't want all of us running around with big piles of cash. They want our money in the banks where they can track it, trace it and keep a close eye on it.
On the one hand, it is a good thing to catch criminals and terrorists, but on the other hand how much privacy and freedom are we willing to lose just so that we can feel a little safer?
And as cash becomes criminalized, are all of us going to be forced into the banking system whether we like it or not? If we cannot pay for things in cash, what other choices are we going to have?
The truth is that the more you think about this issue, the more disturbing it becomes.
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/a...h-transactions
Yeh, so this doesn't say CARRYING the cash is a crime (not yet), but it does leave a question: How do you carry it without getting it? I know in our training we learn about structuring, how people reach the $10k level with a series of transactions.
And nothing I've seen (or read here) seems to refute the notion that if you start doing this, you're name will be on a watch list of suspects who may be engaged in illegal activities. And why not? There certainly is no longer any need to carry big wads of cash around. The first guess law enforcement will make is "wants to do a lot of business without a paper trail". Fugitives often take that route. Deadbeat dads do. And even the occasional honest person. It certainly is eccentric in an electronic society. Oh, and I suppose rightwingers arming to fight the government may be doing that, too.