Guardian Vaults No Longer Accept Cash Payments

Average 5k seems quite generous or I must be with the wrong crowd

 

I'm not sure what you mean.

ATO requires Australian tax residents to disclose any overseas assets worth $50k+.

 

It is quite good, but it's still not a lot of money in the scheme of other investments like property that Australians are mad about.
People know they earn practically nothing on their cash saving, and they often pay bank fees. So having negative rates at say 1-2% or something hardly going to raise an eyebrow unfortunately, and that's what those behind this are counting on.

 

Now that I did not know, so how would the ATO know if you hold over 50k in PMs overseas and don't declare it?

 

They probably wouldn't know immediately. But if you ever transferred the sale proceeds back to Australia, you may be questioned.

There's also CRS (Common Reporting Standard). So if you have an overseas bank account, all your records are sent back to the Australian authorities. So even if you don't transfer the sale proceeds back, you still may get caught.

 

I see. The thing is, not everyone using Guardian would be storing PMs. Unless the contents have to be revealed, the government wouldn't know whether said person owns PMs. And if they get desperate enough, they might ask what is inside the boxes.
If it comes to that point though, would you still want to stay in the country?

 

IMO the gov will eventually require a statement SD contents (probably within the next decade). Probably under the guise of AML or KYC ... etc.

No. But if most other countries have similar policies, where would you go?

 

Well, how about some of the countries listed below? I'm just thinking of these at the top of my head without any background knowledge of the countries, but do you think the following countries would be doing what Australia is doing? At the end of the day, I do think Guardian is pressured by the government to comply with some additional AML provisions.
I'm not saying that the following countries would be ideal but if privacy is such an issue and you need to move your assets out of the country, would any of these countries make it better?

• Singapore
• New Zealand (possible they might change later on)
• Switzerland
• Luxembourg
• United Arab Emirates
• Cayman Islands

 

I don't think so. I think they most likely just looked at the number of people using cash and determined it wasn't worth the hassle any more.

 

they are not in the business of collecting cash payments, which may be subjected to theft
so they outsource the collections of annual fees to the bank via timely deduction and money balances
so this lead to people having to set up giro bank deduction to rent a box, in turn certain citizen can not open a bank account

 

I believe Guardian has changed their stance on cash because of the AUSTRAC reporting requirements involved around it

 

Send your stack my way I’ll take good care of it

 

Like I said before. If you remain an Australian resident for tax purposes, you would then be obligated to declare your overseas assets if they total $50K+.

Also, there's the logistics of moving it overseas. I can't imagine how much that would cost for decent amounts of Silver.

 

Yes, this was to address your question on where you would store PMs should the situation be so bad in Australia that you would seriously have to consider looking elsewhere.
Though this would be something of last resort.

 

But going back to subject, if anyone has an account with Guardian, what would you guys do? Will you still use their services despite it leaving a possible trail or would this change be enough for you to look elsewhere? And if so, where would you go as there aren't many players in Australia that provide a service on par with Guardian?

 

I wouldn't go with Fortis!

 

How come? There aren't many players in Australia. Where would you go since Guardian won't be taking cash?

 

In Sydney Custodian Vaults still accept cheques and deposits to their bank a/c. Not sure about cash over the office desk.

Make the cheque payable to cash and hand over as you would cash, or just make the deposit with cash at the bank with only your Custodian Vaults reference number on the depo slip.

Maybe worth a call or email to them.