Comment by davismwfl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by davismwfl | Hacker News Reader

It bugs me reading some of the the comments here blaming the person that did nothing illegal by carrying cash. It doesn't matter if you (or I) feel it is inadvisable to carry cash, it isn't illegal. Smoking pot (illegal in most places) before flying is obviously not the brightest idea given the enhanced level of security at an airport. So I am ok with the "smell" prompting some extra questions (even an agreed to search) but not the seizure of personal property when nothing can tie that property to a crime.

Also, don't forget, here in the US many people cannot qualify for a simple checking/savings account at a bank, meaning they use check cashing services to cash their paychecks and only have cash. There is absolutely nothing is illegal about them only having cash. If anything IMO it is immoral that these people are iced out of the banking environment because of past credit mistakes etc. Immigrants and minorities are almost always the worst affected, how is that right?

Civil asset forfeiture is horrid and needs to be done away with permanently and nationally. If you want to take someones property prove it was involved in a crime and directly contributed to or tied to the criminal act. If the property is properly seized through the courts, the proceeds should first benefit anyone directly afflicted by the criminal act, then secondarily pay for the court and legal fees to reduce taxpayer obligations.

I'm really curious, how do you not qualify for a savings account?

I've never seen a bank that wouldn't take money, especially when they can charge account maintenance fees.

When you're counting every dollar, why would you want to pay a bank maintenance fees?

Many banks require a credit check to open a bank account without meeting a minimum balance... no way of getting credit in the first place if you're that poor.

The main reasons are probably regulation and effort/difficulty to serve.

Assuming you are a US citizen, I highly invite you to come over to Switzerland and try and open a (savings) account if you wish to experience it in person. I'm currently living here, and talking to my US colleagues, I've found that it is near impossible for them to open an account, even though they would bring money to the banks here.

Reasoning? Issues of the US with the Swiss banking system has made these customers more of a pain than a benefit. I'm sure a similar argument can be made for people who (perhaps accidentally) have a bad credit score

This is not a Swiss specific thing. The US is one of the few countries that taxes citizens (and permanent residents) while the they don't live in the US. Consequently citizens have to self report their foreign income and foreign taxes. There are various tax treaties, but the US person will essentially have to pay the difference between the foreign taxes and the US taxes on that money (that at no point went anywhere near the US, nor any services it provides).

But of course that wasn't enough. The FATCA law requires foreign institutions to also report back to the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance...

> The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) is a United States federal law requiring United States persons (including those living outside the U.S.) to have yearly reported themselves and their non-U.S.financial accounts to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN), and requires all non-US (Foreign) Financial Institutions (FFI's) to search their records for suspected US persons for reporting their assets and identities to the US Treasury.

Note the last part. The burden imposed by FATCA on those institutions is so high, that they are refusing to have any US related people as customers. Heck the FATCA law is so wide reaching and onerous that a friend in Sri Lanka was bitching about having to implement it at their company, even though they don't employ a single US related person.

The net result is US citizens living abroad are giving up citizenship rather than deal with all this crap. It is noticeable how under represented Americans expats are, and there will be increasingly fewer. (As a counter-example, you will find Brits everywhere.) This will harm the country and its integration into the rest of the world (economically, politically etc).

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24135021

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/06/fatca-hurts...

http://fatca.hsbc.com/

To make the situation even weirder, "giving up citizenship" to avoid these complications is difficult and expensive for US expats.

Renunciation of US citizenship was free until July 2010, the same year that FACTA went into effect. At that time US embassies started charging a $450 fee to renounce citizenship. In September 2014, this fee was raised to $2,350.

So an American family of four, living abroad, who wants to renounce their US citizenship needs to come up with $9400 to do so.

Not to mention potentially MUCH higher fees to the IRS for becoming an expat:

https://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International-Taxpayers/Expa...

I have seen other countries do that -- force citizens to pay a hefty fee to renounce their citizenship. It is like they see this as a last chance to extract any money from them, so they make it their worth.

You know, people in US laugh at opressive regimes who they don't allow people to leave the country to travel. Yet US is doing the same in a way with respect to citizenship.

In addition to the usual issues that come up with identity documents, some banks want documentation of an address of residence (e.g. a utility bill in the customer's name), which a lot of people don't have for various reasons.

There are a few checks banks make that can make it so they won't open any type of account for you.

1. Credit check, poor credit makes you a risk and they don't like it, but this can sometimes be overcome more easily then the others.

2. If you had a prior account and it was closed forcibly or your SS# still shows up in the checking system as risky. There are a few national clearing houses that track your checks to see if you are a good/bad risk for accepting checks for retailers. Those same systems banks use to determine if they will give you an account.

3. If you have been convicted of a crime of dishonesty in the past, e.g. shoplifting, charged for a bad check, fraud etc.

4. If you do not have a permanent address or your address isn't a permanent residence, e.g. you live in motels day to day.

It isn't that these reasons aren't valid for banks to have concerns about you, but to totally ice you out or charge outrageous fees just because doesn't seem right to me. There are other options, like a savings account with no checks and cash withdrawal only etc.

I am not from USA so curious, with ATMs, debit cards what is the use of check. In my 10 years of banking had to get money out of check only once, when I had lost my card.

I pay rent every month with a check, and this still seems common. Only one of my previous four landlords has accepted another form of payment (a large rental company who accepted credit/debit cards).

And in my experience, landlords charge extra fees for credit/debit. A cheque is usually the most universal and cheap way to pay in the US.

Although it is weird. Many bigger businesses won't take personal checks, while smaller businesses often are not setup to process cards and will only take checks.

Many banks also just don't do business in lower-income areas.

I was denied a bank account when I was in the middle of moving out of my parents house and needed them to essentially cosign/co-own the account.

The stated reason was an inability to document my income and a lack of credit information.

Similarly, I've been denied credit cards and bank accounts since this "co-ownership" has mixed my financial information in LexisNexis [and similar services] with that of my parents and I don't always know the questions they ask to verify my identity and/or claim that I'm not me.

For instance, I shutdown my Chase account because one part of Chase insisted I wasn't me [to the point of denying me access to services I had paid for] while the other part of Chase held my money. I'm not going to trust Chase to hold 5 figures of my cash if they are simultaneously going to insist over the phone I'm not me because I can't answer questions sourced from services like LexisNexis. That'd be insane.

Try contacting the CFRB

This was 10 years ago.

wadetandy in these comments posted a link to an FDIC survey which goes into the details of why 8% of US households don't have an account, and why others are 'underbanked'; at https://www.fdic.gov/householdsurvey/2012_unbankedreport.pdf :

> Similar proportions of previously banked (33.2 percent) and never-banked (32.8 percent) households report that they don’t have a bank account because they don’t have enough money for one; this was the most common reason given by both groups. The second most common reason was not needing or wanting an account, although a larger percentage of never-banked households (26.0 percent) cited this reason than did previously banked households (15.6 percent). This finding implies that households that have had a bank account in the past may place more value on a banking relationship than those that have not.

> For nearly 10 percent (9.5 percent) of previously banked households, the main reason they do not currently have an account is that the bank closed their account. Another 5.5 percent of previously banked households cannot open an account because of identification (ID), credit, or banking history problems. This suggests that about 15 percent of previously banked households may not choose to be unbanked but face institutional barriers related to opening or maintaining an account.

> High bank account fees or minimum balance requirements were the main obstacles to account ownership for slightly more than 5 percent of unbanked households. However, recently unbanked households were more likely than others to cite fees as an obstacle: more than one in ten (11.1 percent) households that had a bank account in the last year were currently unbanked because of high fees and balance requirements, compared to 6.0 percent of previously banked households that had an account over a year ago. ...

How is it government doesn't respect property rights? That's my bigger concern.

A bank refused me because I didn't have a valid driver's license - I had a valid state ID from the DMV, which was the exact same in every way except it had 'non-driver' printed on it. I asked to speak to the manager, but he couldn't explain it either, just said something about "It's a policy". You have to drive a car to have an account at that bank.

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