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Excuse me? What is this all about?

I read a story a week or so ago that made my jaw drop.

Apparently, according to this story, Under tax legislation introduced in 2023, businesses are required to collect customer details for purchases over $1000 to ensure compliance with tax rules.

Excuse me?

What the hell is going on in this country?

Now, even the simple act of spending a modest amount of your own hard-earned cash, such as when buying a big load of groceries, requires proof of ID?

I really couldn't believe what I was reading. Is this "papers please" or you don't eat?

Now while I can understand the importance of trying to reduce money laundering and other similar offences, it seems that we have now reached the point where *everyone* is assumed to be guilty of a crime unless they can prove otherwise.

Or is this just an attempt to delete cash as a means of payment?

If you're wondering why you've never been asked for your details when spending more than $1,000 it's probably because you paid with plastic or online banking. Obviously, in those cases, the payment method also provides the identification required under law.

However, it seems that the government has very quietly removed our right to engage in anonymous cash transactions when the amount involved may be as little as that required for buying a month's worth of groceries at once.

Are you happy about that?

While it's true that most of us have largely moved to electronic payment methods for our regular bills and day to day purchases, cash is still something everyone should carry and be able to use without the prying nose of the state getting involved.

Sure, if you're fronting up with a many thousands of dollars in cash to buy a big-ticket item it makes sense that some kind of identification is required but the threshold of a paltry $1,000 seems awfully low to me and designed more as a disincentive to use cash than a means of catching nefarious transactions.

I hear anecdotally, that people who simply wish to withdraw amounts as small as $500 are often taken aside and asked questions about the intended purpose of that withdrawal, both here in NZ and across the ditch in Oz. What business is it of the banks or "big brother" what someone intends to spend $500 cash on?

It's also not unreasonable to keep a few hundred dollars in cash -- just in case.

Just in case of what?

Well the chaos that ensues in our shops whenever electronic payment systems fail is huge. I've seen trolleys of food abandoned in supermarkets when the checkout is unable to take those electronic payments. Even the old zip-zap machines would be no use if you were trying to pay with your phone.

What would YOU do if there was a CME, major hacking event or some other catastrophe that took down the electronic payment systems for several days? How would you buy petrol for your car, milk, bread or pay for a hundred other essential purchases -- if it weren't for having a cash nest-egg "just in case"?

Although the world in 2025 offers many hitherto unimagined freedoms -- such as the right to identify as a cat (WTF?), it appears to me that we have increasingly relinquished so many other, far more valuable ones without a blink -- or perhaps without even realising it.

Perhaps the militant streak in me is simply getting stronger as I age but I'm not in the least bit happy with the way our right to privacy and anonymity is being whittled away bit by bit.

Forget about the predictions of Nostradamus, George Orwell was the one who so clearly described the future we're heading into.

Carpe Diem folks!

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