The Shadow Tycoon
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 47: Receipts Before Closing Time
Later, a little after four in the afternoon, before the IRS closed, Mr. Fox had someone take the money and his full set of receipts and stubs to the IRS for registration.
That was federal law. If you wanted to deposit more than five thousand dollars into a bank, you had to provide the bank with legal proof.
What needed proving was not whether the money was genuine, but how the money had been obtained, and whether the taxes on it had been paid.
Without that proof, the bank would not accept the cash into its system, and it would raise the monitoring level on the relevant account accordingly.
Some people had once used a relatively simple method to handle money like this. They would split ten thousand dollars into ten portions, then have ten different people deposit the money into their own accounts before wiring it to a designated account.
That could effectively evade the Large Cash Transaction Regulation set by the Federation government. So why did people not use it?
The reason was just as simple. Once concentrated bank transfers occurred, if the bank deemed the risk too high, it would directly freeze both the outgoing and incoming accounts until both sides could provide sufficient evidence proving the money was legal.
The fact was that they naturally could not prove it. Then the bank would confiscate the sum, voluntarily pay a special tax on it to the IRS, and swallow the rest into its own belly.
If the account holder refused to accept that, he could sue. But most accounts that ran into this sort of problem chose, in the end, to suffer in silence. Better not to make such a fuss that they lost both their money and themselves.
Besides the banks watching every kind of account, the Federation FBI’s Financial Crimes Division was also watching those accounts. Perhaps there really were some survivors, but far more were dragged out by the roots.
Countless cases reminded people again and again: they could break the law, but they could not fail to pay taxes.
Mr. Fox’s nephew and several of his men drove a box truck to take the money to the IRS for registration. Afterward, carrying the forms stamped with Sabine City’s tax registration completion seal, they went to the nearby Shengrong Bank. It was an old bank with a long history, and one of the Empire’s six major banks.
Its founder came from the predecessor of the Baler Federation: Prince Shengrong, from the imperial era of the Baler Federation. The Empire had fallen, but some things had remained.
The instant the group pushed the carts loaded with coins into the bank, a massive crystal chandelier hung down from an upper space at least twenty meters high. Light passed through every crystal prism and fell into every corner of the bank.
The marble floor, maintained daily, was like a mirror. Beneath that mirrored surface, rare natural gold-veined marble gleamed under the light, throwing off a flowing brilliance.
The place was like a palace of gold, every inch of it steeped in dignity.
A strikingly well-presented bank manager was already waiting by the door. With a warm smile on his face, he came forward, constantly asking questions, constantly filling out a form on the clipboard in his hand, and also checking the tax registration form held by the escort.
He was called a bank manager, but in fact he was an account manager at Shengrong Bank. There were at least twenty such managers in the hall, each with an independent office and clients of his own.
“One moment. I’ll go file the report...” While having staff bring coffee and refreshments, the manager walked toward the administrative office inside. This was standard procedure.
Depositing a large amount of coins required quite a lot of manpower for “sifting.” The bank had a kind of sifter, much like the sieve in a country farmer’s house. Through constant manual shaking, coins of different denominations and sizes would fall through different holes, speeding up the counting process.
From the bank’s point of view, this was already a very fast method, but it still took time.
At that moment, the telephone behind Mr. Fox, who was enjoying a Colof, suddenly rang.
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