Cash Transaction Reporting Threshold Triples to $30,000: Treasury Aims to Streamline Anti-Money Laundering Rules

The new STREAMLINE Act is exactly what it sounds like: a major effort to change how the government tracks large cash transactions and suspicious financial activity. The biggest change? It immediately raises the threshold for mandatory Currency Transaction Reports (CTRs) from $10,000 to a whopping $30,000. If you’re a business owner or a financial institution, this means you only have to report a customer’s cash transaction if it hits that new, much higher limit.

The New Math: Less Paperwork for Banks, Less Data for Law Enforcement

This bill directly addresses compliance costs by significantly reducing the number of reports financial institutions and certain businesses have to file. Under Section 2, the $10,000 reporting trigger for CTRs—the reports filed when someone deals in large amounts of cash—is replaced everywhere in the law with $30,000. For a bank or a car dealership that handles dozens of transactions between $10,001 and $29,999 every month, this is a massive reduction in administrative burden. That’s the benefit: less time spent on paperwork and more time focused on business. However, it’s also the trade-off. These CTRs are a crucial tool for law enforcement and regulators tracking money laundering, tax evasion, and drug trafficking. Tripling the threshold means the government will lose visibility on a huge volume of cash transactions that currently help flag illicit activity. Think of it this way: the government is intentionally raising the bar for when the alarm bell goes off, which makes it easier for criminals to fly under the radar by structuring transactions just below the new $30,000 limit.

Inflation-Proofing the Rules

One clear benefit of the STREAMLINE Act is that it finally acknowledges reality: inflation exists. Five years after the initial $30,000 threshold is set, and then every five years after that, the Treasury Secretary must adjust the reporting limits based on the Consumer Price Index (Section 2). This means the rules won't become outdated and ineffective over time. For example, if inflation significantly erodes the value of the dollar over the next five years, the Treasury will automatically raise the reporting threshold further, rounded to the nearest $1,000. This built-in adjustment mechanism is smart policy, ensuring the law remains relevant without requiring Congress to intervene every decade.

Suspicious Activity Reports Get a Boost, Too

The bill also directs federal agencies to update the thresholds for Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) within 180 days. Currently, certain SARs are triggered at $2,000 and $5,000. The STREAMLINE Act raises those triggers to $3,000 and $10,000, respectively (Section 2). Again, this reduces the number of low-level SARs that compliance officers must file, which is a win for efficiency. But just like with the CTRs, law enforcement relies on the volume of these reports to spot patterns. Raising the SAR threshold means fewer transactions are automatically flagged as potentially suspicious, potentially making it harder to catch smaller-scale illicit financing operations.

Mandatory Review for Automation

On the administrative side, the Treasury Department is mandated to conduct a comprehensive review of all existing reporting forms within 360 days (Section 2). The goal is to see how they can better combine, prioritize, and, crucially, automate these reporting processes. For anyone dealing with the current, often clunky compliance system, the promise of automation is huge. If Treasury can successfully streamline and digitize the reporting process, it could significantly cut down on the time and cost burden for financial institutions while theoretically making the data collected more useful for analysts. The bill explicitly states that these changes won't affect the Treasury Secretary’s ability to issue special geographic targeting orders, which are used to crack down on specific high-risk areas.