The currency transaction report (CTR) is a record just that U.S. financial corporations will have to file with FinCEN for every single deposit, cash out, exchange of currency, as well as other payment or transfer, by, thru, or to the financial institution which entails a transaction in currency of beyond $10,000. Used in this perspective, currency indicates the coin and/or paper money from a country that is delegated as legal tender by the country of issuance. Currency also includes American silver certificates, U.S. notes, Federal Reserve notes, and recognized foreign bank notes.

The consultant Shawn Wikoff: CTRHistory

When the 1st version of the CTR was produced, the only way a shady transaction less than $10,000 was reported to the administration was if a bank teller called the authorities. This has been mostly a result of the financial industry's main concern about the right to financial level of privacy. On Oct 26, 1986, with the passing of the Money Laundering Control Act, the right to financial privacy was not any longer an concern. As part of the Act, Congress had expressed that a financial organization could not be held responsible for issuing fishy transactional important information to law enforcement. Due to this, the next version of the CTR had a questionable transaction check box at the top. This was in effect until April 1996 when the Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) was announced.


Procedure

Whenever a transaction that involves more than $10,000 in cash is processed, almost all banks have a system that instantly creates a CTR in electronic format. Tax and various other data about the individual is commonly pre-filled through the bank software. CTRs since 1996 include an optionally available checkbox at the top if the financial institution employee thinks the financial transaction to be suspicious or deceptive, generally called a SAR, or Suspicious Activity Referral. A consumer is not directly told about the $10,000 limit unless they initiate the inquiry. A customer may turn down to continue the transaction upon being aware about the CTR, but this would involve the banking company staff member to register a SAR. When a customer presents or asks to withdraw more than $10,000 in currency, the decision to carry on the financial transaction must carry on as formerly required and may not be reduced to prevent the filing of a CTR. One example is, if a client reneges on his or her initial inquire to deposit or withdraw above and beyond $10,000 in cash, and instead demands the same transaction for $9,999, the bank worker should refuse such a request and continue the transfer as formerly requested by filing a CTR. This kind of attempt is recognized as structuring, and is punishable by federal law towards both the consumer and the bank personnel. Many who routinely run transactions less than the $10,000 threshold will most likely subject themselves to analysis and/or the filing of a SAR.