
Sweden proposes ban on ride-sharing services that make profits - khuranagam
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sweden-taxicommission-idUSKBN13Q3YD
======
dang
The key word in this title is "proposes". That's a strong signal that the
article is political fluff.

Sure enough, read the text for actual information and you'll see that it's
reporting on a press conference about a commission that issued a report. This,
through the magic of journalism, turns into "Sweden".

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kalleboo
So, they want to encourage ride-sharing in the original meaning - carpooling.
Not the "taxi company in disguise" meaning. Sounds fair enough to me.

For context, the taxi regulation in Sweden is very light. There is no
medallion system limiting the number of cars, and no regulation of prices. You
just need an extended driver's license, an approved taxi-meter (same as how
grocery stores need their scales to be approved), and the pricing plan listed
clearly in the window.

There has been quite a bit of criticism of this lack of regulation, since some
private taxi drivers will prey on tourists by overpricing their services by 3x
and waiting at airports. Since their rip-off prices are displayed right there
in the window, it's fully legal. Tourists don't know the typical price of a
taxi, and fresh off an airplane are not sure what the local currency rate is
(Sweden isn't on the Euro), and hence get ripped off.

~~~
edblarney
"So, they want to encourage ride-sharing in the original meaning - carpooling.
Not the "taxi company in disguise" meaning. Sounds fair enough to me."

I'm not necessarily a fan of Uber, but this is ridiculous.

If 'taxis' are legal in Sweden then there's no reason Uber should not be able
to operate _so long as they are obeying the laws_.

Ostensibly, this is about a specific issue - distance travelled and the lack
of ability for tax authorities to measure that.

Two things to know about Nordic countries:

1) They are super, super aggressive when it comes to tax things. Cheating on
taxes is worse than some major crimes!

2) They are culturally anti-business and anti-entrepreneurial. I know this may
seem odd given the number of startups - but their version of 'socialism' is
cultural. To be a 'business person' or 'CEO' or to 'have your own company'
even up until the 1980's was considered a 'dirty word'. They have this view
that 'private business is immoral' in some ways. It's hard to describe. They
are just default skeptical of anyone creating a business. Obviously that has
evolved a lot over the last 30 years, but the underlying cultural phenom is
still kind of there.

Finally - this may simply be political. Taxi entities around the world are
trying to find ways to get Uber banned, and so they find an issue or concern
that gives them a legal footing.

Again, I'm not for or against Uber really ...

~~~
robert_foss
As a Swede:

1) Cheating on taxes is quite literally stealing from every other person in
the country. That being said I think there is a lot of small scale cheating
going, especially for small cash-driven businesses.

2) There's no hostility towards entrepreneurs as far as I've seen it, quite
the opposite. However people in general do seem to realize that there is a
very real tradeoff between business interests and the interests of citizens.
You can't have 0% corporate tax and free healthcare and education.

As for Uber Pop, the drivers are not volunteers and are simply either taxed
for the profits they make through Uber Pop or they can do actual not-for-
profit car pooling.

~~~
mafribe

       You can't have 0% corporate tax 
       and free healthcare and education.
    

Sure you can. You tax more elsewhere, e.g. higher VAT, higher income tax,
higher captial gains, higher giraffe tax ... The possibilities are infinite.

Taxation is ultimately a social tool to organise how people work as a
group/nation, who does what etc.

I think Estonia has or had 0% corporate tax.

~~~
robert_foss
Right, just to clarify. You can have 0% corporate tax rate, you just have to
recoup those taxes elsewhere.

And as corporations are benefiting from free education and healthcare they
clearly should pay into that system too.

~~~
ptaipale
I think you should study the field of tax incidence a bit.

Corporate tax actually falls on shareholders and workers. It _sounds_ nice:
tax those faceless corporations and not us nice citizens. But the actual end
result is not necessarily what one may think.

You will of course find lots of material claiming this and that about
corporation tax, because people are passionate about it, but for some balance,
this is a summary I picked at random:

[https://hbr.org/2014/08/who-pays-corporate-taxes-possibly-
yo...](https://hbr.org/2014/08/who-pays-corporate-taxes-possibly-you)

(And in case of Sweden, consider that it is a particularly open economy.)

------
taxicabjesus
> Uber is currently seeking to convince Europe's top court that it is a
> digital service, not a transport company, in a case that could determine
> whether app-based startups should be exempt from strict laws meant for
> regular companies.

Uber found a way to abide by New York State's existing regulations for a
special license for drivers and commercial insurance. Everywhere else it plays
make-believe - 'we're just a technology company' \- for as long as it can.

The end-game in Europe is probably that Uber Technology will abandon its
ambitions to be a not-a-taxi company, and provide its app to local
transportation companies who are already regulatory-compliant.

The taxi company that I used to drive for was large enough to build its own
modern [1] app-based dispatching system. So they don't need uber's technology
anymore.

[1] [http://www.taxiwars.org/electronic-taxi-
dispatch-v1.0/](http://www.taxiwars.org/electronic-taxi-dispatch-v1.0/)

~~~
Bartweiss
> The taxi company that I used to drive for was large enough to build its own
> modern [1] app-based dispatching system.

If nothing else, I appreciate that Uber is pushing taxi companies to develop
on-demand hailing apps. I've started seeing local companies advertise them
specifically in response to Uber's success.

------
daemin
My take on the whole Uber vs Taxis thing is much more about just convenience
and user experience.

If the taxis got together and created an app that you could hail a taxi, track
its progress, and follow it to your destination, and take the payment
automatically, there would have been no (or far less) need of Uber.

I have had several experiences where I called for a taxi, but none arrived.
Then I went to the main road and hailed one within minutes.

So it's all about user experience.

~~~
kuschku
> If the taxis got together and created an app that you could hail a taxi,
> track its progress, and follow it to your destination, and take the payment
> automatically, there would have been no (or far less) need of Uber.

They did. Before Uber even existed.

Check out [http://www.taxi.eu/en/](http://www.taxi.eu/en/)

~~~
dx034
The problem is that it doesn't solve the problem with availability. With surge
pricing, Uber is able to get you a ride whenever you want, if you are willing
to pay for it. With fixed pricing it regularly happens that you won't be able
to get a taxi for hours during busy periods. I've just been to Potsdam
(Germany, Uber is banned there) and wanted to get a taxi back at night. I
tried for 45 minutes by hailing and calling the local number several times,
with no success. Either I couldn't reach anyone or they told me they don't
have anyone available. Luckily I did this while already walking in the right
direction, so I was at the hotel after 80 minutes. With uber I'd have paid
more but would've had a ride within 10 min or so.

This ability to always get a ride within a few minutes, no matter where and
when, that is what I (and many others) like about uber. Tracking cars in the
app is nice but hardly the defining factor.

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rasmusei
Not sure if the following has already been mentioned in other comments, so
apologies if I'm posting redundant information.

The "ride-sharing services" that make profits are _already_ illegal in Sweden
according to court decision, since it essentially means "taxi company without
the annoying taxes". And consequently UberPOP has been suspended in Sweden
along with several other EU countries (as also noted in the original post).

So the new proposal mostly seems like a way to clarify legislation: If you do
something systematically to make a profit, we call that business and you pay
taxes and follow all other relevant legislation (worker's rights etc). Makes
very much sense to me.

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shocks
Stockholm is full of 'fake' taxis that take you longer routes and charge you
more money.

I'd much rather use Uber.

~~~
aedron
I would use any taxi company that charged me the price up front, paid through
the app, calculated based on distance from source to destination and some
heuristics about time-of-day, time-of-year, etc.

The driver would be incentivized to get you to your destination quickly and
there wouldn't be that awkward tension about whether the guy is taking the
best route, driving too slow or whatever.

Even if they occasionally lost money because of freak traffic conditions, I'll
bet they would win over a lot of customers.

~~~
Bartweiss
I feel like the discussions of what Uber does undervalue this. Medallion
systems are silly, Uber is using some shady legal arguments, etc, fine. But
the actual taxi experience is often _terrible_.

Last time I took an actual taxi in a new town, the driver spoke next to no
English, misunderstood my destination, and got lost 3 times. He tried to drop
me off in the middle of the woods because his outdated Garmin told him to. He
then tried to charge me ~$80 because of all the bizarre detours, demanded cash
instead of a credit card (at the end), and tried to follow me when I objected.

That's exceptional, yeah, but not hugely so. Uber's biggest value to me is the
guarantee that the driver will have clear directions, not try to change route,
take a credit card, and otherwise not scam me. The cab industry in a lot of
places is _really_ corrupt compared to other businesses.

~~~
dx034
It's not that exceptional, I've experienced that in several countries. Of
course you could complain, but first you have to know who to contact at the
local authority. With uber it's easy. If the driver tries to rip you off, you
contact them and get fast and helpful support. And you won't have to pay if
the driver decides to take a detour.

------
larrik
"A photo illustration shows the Uber app logo displayed on a mobile telephone,
as it is held up for a posed photograph in central London" \- that's some
caption!

------
Eridrus
So I'm guessing that Uber is going to start a Swedish non-profit and pay all
profits to their (likely) Irish entity as tech licensing fees and keep moving.

Anyone have a reason to think this won't be the outcome if they can't fight
this in court?

~~~
SixSigma
Uber will not make a profit for decades, break-even is a stretch of credulity.

Unless you think they can somehow turn around $2bn loss on $1.8bn revenue in a
very thin margin business.

------
poke111
"Profits are evidence of the creation of social value, not deductions from the
sum of the common good."

[http://www.nationalreview.com/article/256612/welcome-
machine...](http://www.nationalreview.com/article/256612/welcome-machine-
kevin-d-williamson")

------
robert_foss
The 600 or so Uber Pop drivers that have been found by the taxation agency
have had an extra ~2kUSD added to their taxes.

------
jycr753
So I guess Uber is on the clear

------
agentofoblivion
The key word is "profits". Uber has certainly never made those.

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synicalx
Is anyone really surprised that Sweden, of all places, is suggesting this?

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maxencecornet
That's insane, when you know that this is exactly the buisness model of one of
France's largest, if not the largest, tech company Blablacar

~~~
cyxxon
As a German, I say that is exactly what is wrong with Blablacar, so this is a
good thing ;) Blablacar rpesents itself as a service that matches people
having a spot in their car and people needing to travel from A to B, and for a
long time they did just that. Now they started mandatory booking though their
payment system (with the added benefit of insurance, granted), and everything
about it has become worse: my girlfriend lives far away from big cities, but
relatively close to the Autobahn, and it is much worse now for her to get a
ride. Previously she could message people offering rides that should take them
close to her place and ask them how much they wanted, now private
communication is prohibited, fares seem precalculated, etc...

I guess it is a hard market, sure, but nobody forced them to compete against
simple ride sharing websites, but they did, and now try heavy handed tactics
once they captured a big piece of the market... /rant

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mlgkid69
alright but now this time FOR REAL!!!

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mlgkid69
but why tho?

------
mlgkid69
its ur boi

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Shivetya
Sorry, but either regulate it as the taxi industry or force the taxi industry
to be a profitless business as well. If being professional is defined by
having a certificate or such then simply have these services require their
drivers provide such certification.

Honestly, just how many ways can we find to prevent innovation from disrupting
the protected by daunting regulations from occurring? At times I am beginning
to wonder if this is less about protecting current businesses as it is
government losing control over its people.

~~~
dagw
Taxi regulation in Sweden is very lax and it's trivial to become a certified
taxi business and get a taxi license. Uber could have the paperwork taken care
of by early next week if they wanted, they just doesn't want to comply with
the few necessary regulations.

~~~
kryptiskt
Uber does exist in Sweden, with a service that requires the drivers to have a
taxi license. UberPop that was shut down didn't.

