|
 |
Home >> Accounts >> Business Accounts
Personal Info to Make a Company's Deposit?
As an employee of a business, I delivered a deposit to the company's bank for deposit to the company checking account. The deposit contained $3,010.00 in cash. The bank insisted that I give them my social security number and my driver's license. When I asked why my personal information was needed instead of the company's information, the teller stated that it was a federal law to report this information on transactions over $3,000.00. Was the teller correct in requesting my personal information?
|
|
 As is often the case, there is a grain of truth in what the teller told you, but it's not the whole story. In one of our articles, we discuss the federal law that requires the reporting of transactions in currency of more than $10,000. Click here to access it. When banks are aware that multiple transactions in one day by or on behalf of the same person combine to exceed $10,000 in currency, the federal law requires the Currency Transaction Report described in the article.
The bank was asking for the information in order to have it in the event that you completed other currency transactions on the same business day that, when combined, would take the total over $10,000. By getting the personal information on smaller transactions (this bank evidently uses $3,000 to trigger its inquiry), the bank avoids the necessity of having to contact you after the fact if you should exceed the $10,000 level on a combined basis. Frankly, once the transaction is completed and the bank later figures out it needs information from the individual who has gone back to his/her office, it's often difficult to get the information, so technically the federal law in question does not require the bank to gather that information for transactions at the level of $3,000, but in order to comply with the law if multiple transactions are completed, the bank asks for it each time.
Published on BankingQuestions.com 5/18/09
|
| |
|
Accounts
Article
Q&A
Podcast
Video
Blog
Discussions
PDF
Powerpoint
