Money carrying money across national borders · Carrying money across national borders
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Carrying money across national borders
Carrying money across national borders
Countries track large movements of money across national borders. This is mainly to alleviate money laundering and cash transfers to criminal syndicates. If you transfer money between international bank accounts, this is done automatically, but if you carry large amounts of money (typically more than $10,000 US, Euro, or similar hard currency) you will need to declare it. Don't forget monetary instruments such as traveller's checks count as well.
The rules about personal and business checks can be confusing. If the check is "cashable" and payable to yourself, a traveling party, etc., that counts against the total. But, when abroad, you can mail a check to someone in your home country (or do it online) provided the bank in which the check is drawn is located in the same country as the payee. (If not, you must report.) In other words, the funds never accompanied you, and you're just giving permission to your home bank to pay someone domestically. Having to pay taxes is not an excuse for non-reporting, but then again, the funds to pay them would have to be located in another country for these rules to apply.
Some nations (mostly third world) have such a low import/export limit in the country's home currency (but not US dollars or euros), that these limits may represent pocket change. Often, this is due to local laws not having been updated for hyperinflation. However, in such cases, the currencies are generally not convertible abroad, and/or the rules not always strictly enforced.
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Money
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Money Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.