
Uber loses court battle against Australia Tax Office - chris_wot
http://www.smh.com.au/business/uber-just-lost-a-crucial-court-ruling--which-might-push-up-the-price-of-a-fare-20170217-guf8ql.html
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crdb
What would make sense would be to tax the 20% cut that Uber (the company that
makes >$75,000/year in revenue) is taking from the rides (see any discussion
of what exactly is GMV).

Then, if an individual driver does make more than the threshold, he'd also
lose his GST exemption. This would be a fair and correct application of the
existing legislation that takes into account that drivers are self-employed
and that Uber is a large company.

I like that Australia is attempting to maintain the rule of law, but Uber has
a point: if they are to be treated like taxis they ought to have all the
privileges of taxis, including street pickups.

This particular solution sounds more like the government wants a certain
outcome and is bending the rules to achieve it, which is in the long term
damaging to the rule of law.

If the issue is one of implementation (such as the government being
technically incapable or legally barred from doing a simple SQL query to
determine revenue per driver in a financial year) then they should outright
say so.

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bamboozled
This makes good sense to me, Uber drivers contribute to degredation of
expensive infrastructure (roads) and will also contribute to pollution (noise,
air, run off into waterways), affecting the the host country in which Uber is
conducting business. Therefore, it makes sense that anyone making a profit
from such services should be giving back to the hosting community, just like
anyone else running a business would have too.

