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Comment by PeterisP | Hacker News Reader

IIRC you can't buy a house anonymously in Netherlands, no matter if you pay with cash or not, you'd be required to register the transfer of ownership in the cadastral system, and any real estate deals must be with a written contract that identifies both parties.

And I believe the NL tax reporting for large gifts also requires you to identify the donor.

In essence, the limitation is not on the method of payment but on the core activity, that any significant income from contracts, deals, trades, barters, transfers, gifts, settlements etc need to be non-anonymous in order to be legitimate, so if the method of payment does not identify the payer (i.e. cash) then simply it's your duty to identify who you're dealing with, from whom you are earning money.

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I doubt you could buy a house anonymously anywhere in the west. Typically all large transactions get auto reported to the financial intelligence unit, with the tax man getting access to the data set as well. If paid via crypto they'd find out when the recipient cashes out, forcing him/her to do source of funds.

At least in the US, house purchases are by default anonymous. The only reason I know the sellers of my house is because they put in their trust name their full legal names.

Last time I sold a house, the only reason I met with the buyer directly was because I didn't use an agent for the sale.

What about 1099-S reporting?

Home sales do not universally count as income. Also, it is important to realize that 1099-S reporting applies to individuals like a licensed realtor. Which I am not.

If it's anon, how does the government get their property taxes?

Property taxes are between the owner and the county where I live. They are paid in advance, so you can't sell a house without paying the property tax first. It'd be liened by the tax authority to prevent the sale.

But if the owner is anonymous, how does the country know who to ask for paying the taxes? How would the county even find out that the house changed ownership?

In the grandparent example, it seems the new owner is a trust, which is also liable for paying the taxes (or there can be action taken against its property i.e. the house), but the person owning/controlling that trust is obscured.

Perhaps a relevant different example I've seen sometimes is that in some markets for tax reasons developers who build larger buildings (offices, apartments) will make a separate LLC for each building, so when they want to sell it, the title to the real estate doesn't change hands (it still belongs to the same company) but rather they sell the whole "company" instead with the building as its main/only asset.

<thumbsup> Proposition 13 likes this.

They don't need to know. If the property tax isn't paid a local judge just writes up a new deed to whomever pays off the delinquent property taxes. It is literally property in their jurisdiction. They can take possession any time.

But you have the seller and buyer's name in the title no?

No, it just lists the trust name.

Kind of yes, but if the buyer technically is a trust or a shell company, then the title lists that, and not any person.

Are you staying that the state/county doesn't know that you are the person owning that house, or doesn't know who the previous owner was?

This thread is not about privacy from other private citizens/companies, but privacy from the state authorities. For example, my bank account is private in the first sense (even my parents couldn't find out how much money I have unless I tell them), but it's not private in the second sense (financial authorities have the right to ask my bank how much money I have).

> At least in the US, house purchases are by default anonymous. The only reason I know the sellers of my house is because they put in their trust name their full legal names.

But most homeowners don't have the house in a trust. That's mostly a rich-people thing. The default is that it's your personal name(s) on the documents, including in e.g. county tax records.

Wrong. Germany for example is known [0] for money laundering through properties, because big cash purchases hardly ever get reported.

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-15/germany-t...

This is accomplished every day in every country in the western hemisphere by means of shell companies.

Current EU AML laws are full of requirements for explicit registration of the true beneficiaries for all these companies (including chains of companies); anonymous ownership of companies is becoming illegal in the last couple years.

Looks like the Dutch are just now catching up on that other structure to hide assets: trusts:

https://www.loyensloeff.com/insights/news--events/news/bill-...

> I doubt you could buy a house anonymously anywhere in the west.

In New York, properties are commonly held by LLCs. Transferring ownership of the LLC can be done without any public or auditable record of the transaction.

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