It is plain daft to carry this much cash, never mind what the rules are about declairing it, don't do it at all..

I understand the question of Mala.

I don't know if it's the same case, but my husband and I have been saving for a long time, and in our current residency country, we can't handle other currency than ours. So, we can't transfer AUD to Oz, therefore we have to carry part of our savings in cash.

Hopefuly, when the time to move to Oz comes, we may have to carry a little more than 10.000 AUD cash (between the two of us... maybe 6.000 each), so I had the same question about the declaring issue.

Do we have to? Should we?

hi, what we did is we bought LKR equivalent of one million each (dad and me) by filling out two different migration processes from our country, so that we dont have to go through the massive trouble going to inland revenue! so in AUD it is about 7000 AUD each. so we dont have to declare it australia either since we are two people and each can carry 10000AUD.

Yes you have to declare it. If you do, they will let you keep it, they just record it - just tell them what you posted on here. If you travel every month and bring cash like that in everytime they wlll get more suspicious!! If you don't declare it and they decide to check your bags and find it, u may ne fined and the money confiscated.

Hi gabymqv,

As others have said, there is no problem bringing cash into this country as long as you declare it at the port of entry. I used to work for a U.S. cruise line company and all crew members were paid in cash.

As a result I would usually finish my contract with very large amounts of U.S Dollars $40,000 to $60,000.

I never had any problems traveling through customs in any county I transited, though I did have one of my 'tradies' make me a smugglers vest with six Dollar bill sized pockets to hold the loot and I made sure that I declared all of the money.

The first time I went through customs with a large amount of cash, I was surprised that there were not more checks, but the authorities have all your details through your passport scan and share the information with other government departments. So unless you are trying to do something dodgy, there is nothing to be lost by declaring the cash.

Of course if you don't delare the cash and get caught........

I don't understand why people agonise over this.

The choice is (assuming you have more than $10k):
1) declare the money and keep it all.
2) don't declare it and risk being penalised.

If in doubt ask the customs officer.

I can't see why anyone would take option 2 unless they had obtained the money illegally in the first place. In which case the answer would obviously be option 2. The origin of the money dictates the option you should take. I can't see any other reason to make a choice.

I would have thought that if they split the cash between them, assuming each party carries no more than 10K, then they would not have to declare it. Isn't it 10k per person??

If its more than $10k per person, declare it. Tbats the figure on the forms at present., and its stated earlier in the thread.

Thank you all for all your answers

They were really helpful