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Being amused aside, I wonder what impact the retirement of of euro notes above 50 would have on tax evasion. It's a well know fact in Spain that if you don't want to pay the tax, you pay in cash rather than electronically. Reducing the size of the largest note available for these transactions would increase their cost. Would that drive down tax evasion, and drive up government revenue? If so, would that put any sort of dent in government deficits? And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
(a) generally
(b) Tabulated by number and
(c) Tabulated by value.
You will see that of the 912.7 billion in notes currently out there no less than 293.7 billion (or about 32%) is in 'Bin Ladens'.
That's a whole lotta wonga to extract from under the beds.
My understanding is that in Spain the principal reason for use is that there is an official property sale price against which tax is paid, and then an unofficial price, with the difference being paid in Bin Laden bricks of 500s. I'm not sure how true that is or was. "The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson
an official property sale price against which tax is paid, and then an unofficial price
That's often the case in (parts at least of) France. As far as I've had knowledge of transactions, however, the "under the table" cash settlement rarely exceeds 10% of the total agreed price.
The notary tried to trap the two parties into declaring the full price, but was unable to drive a wedge between them. It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II
For my part, until a couple of years I had my accounts in a very small town, where staff turnover at the bank was low, and there was indeed friendly personal interaction, leading often to going the extra mile in the customer's interest, which is obviously a sub-optimal behaviour in terms of cost effectiveness (assuming they had a captive client). In recent months, having moved to a city branch of the same bank, it's clear that there's none of that nonsense going on there. In fact, I am in conflict with the bank over a sum of a few thousand euros, which they bloody well will reimburse me in the end (even if they don't know it yet), but it wouldn't have taken several months if anyone at the bank had simply had the customer's interest at heart.
The result of this is that I will change banks when the dust settles. Either to a small co-op bank, which will no doubt be inconvenient and offer fewer services, but which might be expected to behave itself better. Or to the cheapest virtual bank I can find : just the services, with no illusions about human involvement. It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II
(If the link doesn't work, just Google the article title, and use the Google sidebar to access the cached article.) Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
This doesn't mean that there won't be fraud, but now it will literally have to involve payments 'on the side'. I distribute. You re-distribute. He gives your hard-earned money to lazy scroungers. -- JakeS
With the ban on cash transactions that you are talking about, it just raises stakes of getting caught. But if the largest note was a 20 or 50, then it would be a whole lot more difficult to do these things off the books. Unless you fancy carrying around a trunkload of the stuff. Presumably doing a transaction all in 20s would mean it would weigh 25 times as much as in 500s. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
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