Hacker News Reader

Comment by macNchz | Hacker News Reader

Frustrating to see more laws like this that can readily throw a wrench in the day to day lives of regular working people, when money laundering and tax evasion at a scale multiple orders of magnitude larger than this is so shamelessly visible in the form of nine-figure real estate transactions, art auctions, and Caymans-based shell corporations.

View on HN

Not being able to spend €3k cash is a wrench in the day to day lives of regular working people?

€3k today is a price of an expensive laptop or an expensive bicycle (e.g. a bakfiets). €3k in ten years will be the price of a normal laptop or a normal bicycle.

How not being able to buy a laptop or a bicycle without asking permission from third parties is a good thing?

The point isn't that nothing costs €3k, but that regular working people rarely have €3k physical cash on hand. Money goes into their bank accounts via direct deposit and they spend it digitally.

In my opinion it's not unthinkable that an older person, someone without a bank account, or someone who works odd-jobs, might save cash in a drawer (regardless of whether that's advisable) for a long time for a larger purchase, like a used car bought in-person directly from someone else. Should we ban that?

Is it possible to have no bank account in the Netherlands? Don't you need one to pay taxes? (I think it's a right to have one and banks must offer a free option.)

How does one launder money with a real estate or art transaction?

Say I've sold a great amount of cocaine and now have 5 million euro in banknotes sitting in my safe at home. How do I launder this money and make it 'legitimate' using those methods?

You sell an art-piece you own to yourself (hidden under several layers of shell companies based in various island-nations) for 5 million.

You buy a house with the cash (private transaction) and then sell the house in a year.

Ok but this law outlaws that. So I don't understand OP's objection

Regular working people are spending 3K in cash?

After a few decades of inflation from now that will be a much more common occurrence and the laws will probably never be updated to reflect that.

Yep, an example of this was how people on SSI disability were restricted from not having more than 2k worth of assets in the 1980s, and it hasn't been updated since. Good luck escaping that poverty trap.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com