tanja

ok I only /always travel with the most $ 300 cash. Cards never.

MSPeconomist

USA rules include some instruments other than cash, such a bearer bonds and travelers' checks IIRC. I would expect other countries to have similar rules, although if you're close to the limit, you need to look carefully at the regulations of the individual countries involved.

dand99

This is an interesting point. The "you must declare over 10k EUR when entering or leaving the EU" signs abound, but in few places do you have signs that cash must be declared in accordance with individual country laws.

I ran into this once having declared in ARN - I was stopped by customs in MXP. Fortunately, they understood I was not a drug kingpin or a terrorist mastermind (when I showed them my ARN declaration) and I just had to go through endless forms in two offices.

Italy especially has its own economic (and mafia) problems - I would advise declaring when crossing any Italian border, even if it means having to hunt down the local customs or "guarda di finanza" personnel who are having their 7 hour lunch break. Or are conspicuously absent. Or do not work on Sundays (ps this is not really an exaggeration).

Sometimes local customs agents are unfamiliar with the exact declaration requirement. Crossing from France into Italy, several customs agents tried to decide whether or not a declaration was needed. They came to a conclusion that if the amount of money you had declared when entering the country/the EU had changed you had to declare again.

GUWonder

Rules are similar in many places due to the U.S. and the U.S.-orchestrated push via the OECD FATF. The "war on money" has been peddled around the world by frog-marching out cause célèbres -- such as the "war on drugs", "war on prostitution/sexual exploitation", "war on human trafficking", "war on tax evasion", "war on terrorism", "war on who knows what". All to get more and more states on board doing much the same sort of thing.

Boggie Dog

What is as concerning are the requirements for financial institutions in the U.S. to file SAR's (Suspicious Activity Reports), for little to no reason, on their customers in order to satisfy regulators.

Section 107

Definitely, but not unreasonable (the response, not the requirement) when one understands that a financial institution's primary purpose is to make money for its shareholders and not necessarily what its customers feel is in their best interests. The financial institution will experience greater negative repercussion from failing to follow government diktats than from the complaints of the relatively few of its customers it secretly reports upon.

It's kinda like when an underage person tries to convince a bartender to serve him drinks: the calculus for the bartender should be how much does he make overall versus how much will he make from that one customer? Of course, if you throw into the mix highly unstable variables such as the attractiveness of the customer, the possibility or probability of a romantic encounter and how much the bartender has drunk himself and the calculus can become quite difficult indeed.

Boggie Dog

The fact that a financial institutions purpose is to make money has nothing to do with SAR's.

The requirements of filing SAR's is so broad that anything can be labeled as suspicious.

I see no reason for government to have such broad reach into peoples everyday business and affairs. People are suppose to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures and SAR's clearly violate that concept.

If government believes a crime has been committed do the police work, get a warrant, and obtain whatever records the warrant specifies. Otherwise get the hell out of the peoples personal and private business.

FlyingHoustonian

In the UK the dec limit is 10k, but their rules and regs also state anything over a 1,000 pounds can be stopped, questioned, and provenance/legality must be proven.