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Currently I have a bank account at Deutsche Bank with approximately 30k€ I have collected working and saving money. I want to move all this money to my Spanish bank account. I have already phoned them asking if I can make the transaction directly and they told me they will take 5% of the total money as commission or 1500€.

After knowing this, I think I prefer to move my money by myself, so I will take 1 trip to Spain (if it's possible to do in one) with my money on hand and then put it in my Spanish bank account.

Question:

Do I need to pay extra taxes? Is there something I have not noticed that can go wrong doing this?

NL - SE listen to your users
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Troyer
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6 Answers6

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I'd worry about being robbed or losing the money en-route. Is it likely? Probably not. But wow, I wouldn't want to lose serious money in one shot. I have fond memories of the time I was serving as treasurer for a non-profit organization and I was taking $30,000 in contributions to the bank. As I walked across the parking lot with all that money in my brief case, I thought, I would really hate to be robbed right now.

When I've moved long distances in the past, I've simply written myself a check from my old account and then deposited that amount to my new account. These days I presume I'd do an electronic transfer. I live in the US so I don't know what the conventions are in Europe, but around here, 5% would be an outrageous fee. I once paid $20 for an electronic transfer of around $3,000, and I considered that an excessive fee. I can understand the bank charging a few bucks, but. I'd check around if there are not other banks with more reasonable fees.

Jay
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A quick search shows that https://www.westernunion.com/de/en/send-money/start.html says they will transfer €5,000 for a cost of €2.90. Assuming you can do a transfer every week, that would be six weeks at a cost of €17.40. €17.40 is slightly less than €1,500.00. I'm sure there are more ways.

gnasher729
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Deutsche Bank states here (couldn't find it in english) that SEPA transfers (all transfers in EUR to EU states that have EUR) are free. So you could just transfer the money. Your custom daily transfer limit (by default 1000€ for online banking transfers) applies. You can change the limit online or by going to one of their branches. You would then transfer your money over the course of several days.

You need the SWIFT and BIC code of your new account.

deflomu
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There are good reasons to not go the cash route here (see Jay's answer). If one insists however, at 30 k€ anti-money laundering regulations have to be considered (and are not mentioned by the existing answers so far). Depositing amounts larger than 10 k€ will trigger questions about the source of the money to fight tax evasion and organized crime (splitting the amount may still trigger the process). So prepare good proof concerning the origin of that money and a paper trail that shows it is legal money and that it has been taxed already.

I.e. the latest Anti-Money Laundering Directive is supposed to be implemented by national laws, thus including Spain.

The European Union Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive is the most sweeping AML legislation in Europe in several years. On 25 June 2015, the EU Fourth Directive was enacted, which replaces the previous Third Directive. With a two-year window for implementation, all EU member states must be compliant with the new mandates by 26 June 2017.

Source

Ghanima
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This might be useful http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/individuals/cash-controls_en As far as I am aware there should be no issues with anything below 10000. But anything after that you have to declare.

Virshininke
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The simple answer would be - if you want to take Euros from Germany to Spain as cash and deposit them, you're not breaking any laws, there is nothing to declare to customs (you're still in the EU), it is not "income" so there is nothing to tax, and your bank should be able to receive it without issue (no currency conversion after all). It does however come with the risk of loss/theft en route. So it really depends on how comfortable you are walking around with that much on your person.

If you don't want to carry that much around and your banks are imposing unreasonable fees, here's something you could investigate further (I have not tested it myself): Transferwise offers a service that lets people send money to foreign accounts (in different currencies) for a small fee, at mid-market rates. However, they also offer a "request money" feature which allows EUR-EUR transfers (and some other same currency transfers). So perhaps you could use this feature to simply request money from yourself.

The requester puts in how much they want to receive. Then they send a generated link to the other party. When clicked, that link sets up a transaction for the requested amount, and sometimes a nominal fee (I created a link for a GBP-GBP transfer and it wanted 1 pound extra, but when I did the same for EUR-EUR it didn't want any extra).

I assume you would need two Transferwise accounts, though maybe not? And I'm not sure whether doing this is technically allowed in their terms of service, so you should read those to be sure.

The advantage, if this works, is that neither bank sees it as a "transfer". Rather, the originating bank makes a payment to Transferwise, and then Transferwise makes a deposit to the receiving account. So I can't imagine either bank would be able to impose their foreign-bank-transfer fees for the transaction.

https://transferwise.com/request-money

I have used Transferwise for currency conversions, but not the request money feature, maybe other users could chime in if they have used it.

CactusCake
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