April 23, 2008 8:30AM # Money Meddling By [Chris Edwards](https://www.cato.org/people/chris-edwards) --- SHARE Are you an entrepreneur who deposits a regular amount of your business revenues in the bank? Watch out, the government might come after you for illegal “structuring.” Are you a high earner who regularly pulls out a substantial amount of cash from your bank account? Watch out, your bank could be sending “suspicious activity reports” about you to the government, as former senator Bob Dole’s bank did. Have you ever deposited or withdrawn more than $10,000 from your bank? Watch out, because your activities were recorded on a government database of “currency transaction reports,” which is growing by 16 million new reports each year. Did you overstate your income on a loan form when you bought your house? Watch out, the government could nail you for both “bank fraud” and “money laundering.” *Forbes* focuses on government encroachments on our civil liberties in a series of articles this month. See [here](http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2008/0407/038.html?partner=yahoomag), [here](http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/0407/028.html) and [here](http://www.forbes.com/business/2008/03/18/spitzer-money-laundering-biz-cz_nv_0318money.html) As a tax wonk, the IRS angle in these articles caught my eye. But like many people, I find it very disturbing that continual expansions in federal power are shrinking the realm of privacy and individual automony in modern society. ##### Related Tags [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Tax and Budget Policy](https://www.cato.org/tax-budget-policy), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).