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Uber Hit with $650M Employment Tax Bill in New Jersey

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Re: Uber Hit with $650M Employment Tax Bill in New Jersey

#31

Post by jacquesm »

nemo44x wrote: post #24

There's no escaping this from states like NJ, CA, IL, MA, and NY. These states (of which I am a member of) are broke with pension obligations waiting to bankrupt the government. Taxes are already high both on income and property so there's nowhere to go there. They have old infrastructures and although the citizens are heavily taxed, government can't make improvements in large part because of lifetime pension obligat…

No, sharing economy companies are breaking the law in interesting and creative ways and it has simply taken the states some time to catch up. That those states also have a pension obligation has nothing to do with them collecting taxes on corporations active in their territory.

Re: Uber Hit with $650M Employment Tax Bill in New Jersey

#32

Post by [deleted] »

nemo44x wrote: post #24

There's no escaping this from states like NJ, CA, IL, MA, and NY. These states (of which I am a member of) are broke with pension obligations waiting to bankrupt the government. Taxes are already high both on income and property so there's nowhere to go there. They have old infrastructures and although the citizens are heavily taxed, government can't make improvements in large part because of lifetime pension obligat…

[deleted]

Re: Uber Hit with $650M Employment Tax Bill in New Jersey

#33

Post by akersten »

nemo44x wrote: post #24

There's no escaping this from states like NJ, CA, IL, MA, and NY. These states (of which I am a member of) are broke with pension obligations waiting to bankrupt the government. Taxes are already high both on income and property so there's nowhere to go there. They have old infrastructures and although the citizens are heavily taxed, government can't make improvements in large part because of lifetime pension obligat…

Do you have some numbers to share to support the hypothesis that pension plans will bankrupt these states without new taxes?

Re: Uber Hit with $650M Employment Tax Bill in New Jersey

#34

Post by Shivetya »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #11
navigatr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, nearly 70% of voters voted against allowing short-term rentals. AirBnb spent over $4 million on that local election alone[1]. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/06/airbnb-suffers-setback-in-je...

Proof that voting works (IMHO). Local residents won against a distant corporate entity.

well preying on ignorance is the game of politicians and they won. Yes I am saying it was a loss for the rest of us.

why? politicians and their allies successfully portrayed the home sharing industry as the reason for rising rents when in fact it has long been because politicians and those using their connections which have been the cause. oh they hide it well but the idea is to keep their investments up and keep "those" people out. Those people being any group which they don't want to see where they live.

If you got this far, good for you. Are there bad actors in the home sharing space. Yes, however you target them more directly but the restriction of requiring owners to be on site during the rental period severely limits the rights of the good ones.

so yes there is some regulation needed but if it does not protect the little guy, and they weren't in this as they got rolled in with the rest, then it harms us all as whole.

rents won't go down until more units are built and they won't be built for the same reasons they were not being built before home sharing industries showed up at the door.

Re: Uber Hit with $650M Employment Tax Bill in New Jersey

#35

Post by fortran77 »

If these Uber drivers were correctly reporting their income (and I can't see how they wouldn't be--Uber surely 1099s it) -- wouldn't each individual driver be paying these same taxes, even as a self-employed person? The self-employed pay into Social Security for both their portion and the employer's portion, this also includes SSDI. I'm not sure how NJ does their state tax calculation.

Re: Uber Hit with $650M Employment Tax Bill in New Jersey

#36

Post by toomuchtodo »

akersten wrote: post #33
nemo44x wrote: post #24

There's no escaping this from states like NJ, CA, IL, MA, and NY. These states (of which I am a member of) are broke with pension obligations waiting to bankrupt the government. Taxes are already high both on income and property so there's nowhere to go there. They have old infrastructures and although the citizens are heavily taxed, government can't make improvements in large part because of lifetime pension obligat…

Do you have some numbers to share to support the hypothesis that pension plans will bankrupt these states without new taxes?

Illinois: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-illinois-pensions/illinoi... (Illinois' unfunded pension liability climbs to $133.5 billion)

https://www.policyed.org/pension-pursuit/pension-liability-s... (PolicyEd: Interactive Map of Pension Liability by State and City)

Illinois is an outlier, and is seriously in trouble, but most other states will be fine.

Re: Uber Hit with $650M Employment Tax Bill in New Jersey

#37

Post by navigatr »

bandrami wrote: post #28

I mean, I used to get tech support gigs on Craigslist all the time. Should Craigslist have been responsible for paying me minimum wage during that time?

I didn't know Craiglist determined your rates and claims to own the relationship between you and your clients.

Re: Uber Hit with $650M Employment Tax Bill in New Jersey

#38

Post by afterburner »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #36
akersten wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have some numbers to share to support the hypothesis that pension plans will bankrupt these states without new taxes?

Illinois: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-illinois-pensions/illinoi... (Illinois' unfunded pension liability climbs to $133.5 billion) https://www.policyed.org/pension-pursuit/pension-liability-s... (PolicyEd: Interactive Map of Pension Liability by State and City) Illinois is an outlier, and is seriously in trouble, but most other states will be fine.

Spread out over how many years?

Re: Uber Hit with $650M Employment Tax Bill in New Jersey

#40

Post by Shivetya »

I am really curious how they arrived at any of the numbers in this article. Seriously, what other large employers make it to hundred plus million per year? Are they just up and deciding that anyone who did one trip is now an employee? Is there a source that shows how much each company pays per year in this state? who else is equivalent?

this isn't about protecting the drivers, this is about protecting the taxi industry and metropolitan mass transit unions both of which were under threat of better service being offered at lower costs both to tax payers as a whole as well as customers. you don't have to like Uber to understand what this is really about. It is protecting the current gravy train the politicians rely on to stay in office.

edit:

https://www.njbia.org/get-njbias-tax-changes-for-2019/

Unemployment Insurance, New Jersey Workforce Development and Health Care Subsidy Fund Taxes

> Employee and employer state Unemployment Insurance tax rates will apply to the first $34,400 of an employee’s earnings in 2019 (up from $33,700 in 2018).

> For 2019, employees are subject to a 0.0425% (.000425) Workforce Development Partnership Fund tax rate. The employee Unemployment Insurance tax rate remains at 0.3825% (.003825) of taxable payroll.

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