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I'm attempting a test transaction of an amount less than 0.0015 BTC with my transaction fee set to 0 BTC, yet I'm getting this message:

The total exceeds your balance when the 0.0015 BTC transaction fee is included.

The transaction fee should be free, right? Why would this happen?

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Bitcoin-Qt enforces the reference implementation:

A transaction will be sent without fees if these conditions are met

  • It is smaller than 10 thousand bytes.
  • All outputs are 0.01 BTC or larger.
  • Its priority is large enough

Otherwise, the reference implementation will round up the transaction size to the nearest thousand bytes and then add a fee of 0.0005 BTC per thousand bytes. Users may override the default 0.0005 BTC/kb fee setting, but cannot control transaction fees for each transaction. Bitcoin-Qt does prompt the user to accept the fee before the transaction is sent (they may cancel the transaction if they are not willing to pay the fee).

Source

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For certain transactions, particularly transactions that have a large number of inputs, or relatively new inputs, the Satoshi client will not let you initiate a transaction without a 0.5mBTC fee. Essentially it tries to prevent you from initiating transactions that will have problems getting forwarded/approved. If you have less than 0.5mBTC is should warn you about this after clicking send.

Note: this is just the way things are. I don't particularly like it that way, I wish there was an advanced option that let you override it, but as far as I know there isn't one. And I do understand the rationale, as we get enough posts as it is on this forum regarding people frustrated with their no fee transactions not getting confirmed.

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