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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

#61

Post by bcrosby95 »

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…

When compared to other states, CA has a middle of the road per capita budget. It's not much more than Washington - which actually has zero income tax.

CA has a high income tax rate, but property taxes aren't that high - they're pretty average for the nation. And the effective property tax rate is even lower due to prop 13. You can actually search this on many property tax websites - on average the effective tax rate for property in some counties is less than half the actual property tax rate.

California has huge budget problems whenever there is an economic downturn due to its heavy reliance on income taxes (which is due to prop 13), which is heavily reliant upon the stock market. This is why certain people love to talk about how its going to "fail" whenever this happens.

Prop 13 does California wrong on so many levels. We're sacrificing our future via the additional perverse incentives it gives for NIMBYism, and unfairly overtaxing productive citizens via the income tax. The state really needs to develop a plan to sunset it.

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

#62

Post by pat87 »

microtherion wrote: post #18
Accujack wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Closing the loophole in the law that lets them treat workers as "contractors" rather than employees is going to torpedo their whole business model.

In my book, it's not a "business model" until it's consistently profitable.

There can be a bad “business model”

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

#64

Post by nemo44x »

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?

https://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/opinion/editorials/stres...

https://www.nj.com/politics/2019/09/nj-is-facing-a-12b-publi...

Even by 2022 the NJ pension is in trouble. It's not hard to read about these as many journalists are covering the pension time bombs in numerous states. State's which happen to be some of the most taxed states in the country.

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

#66

Post by listenallyall »

kapuasuite wrote: post #44
navigatr wrote: post #4

Jersey City just had a public referendum on short-term rentals that AirBnB spent millions of dollars lobbying against. It's good to see that the both the public and its elected officials are coming up to speed on the realities companies like Uber and AirBnb force upon them by skirting the law.

These are the same elected officials who let taxi companies rip off passengers for the better part of a century by limiting competition through the medallion system, and protect hotel interests because they’ve been able to tack a ton of extra taxes onto every hotel bill?

Before the smartphone era, the only possible way to ensure availability of personal transportation was to have a functioning taxi & livery industry. The use of medallions was actually to protect the public, ensuring all drivers were at least accountable and traceable and thus somewhat safe, just like today's Uber riders expect the company to perform background checks on drivers. Yes it benefitted embedded interests, but eliminating medallions would have been worse.

Also, tacking on taxes to hotel bills hurts them, by making visits more expensive and thus reducing demand.

But really nice hot takes.

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

#67

Post by nemo44x »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #61
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…

When compared to other states, CA has a middle of the road per capita budget. It's not much more than Washington - which actually has zero income tax. CA has a high income tax rate, but property taxes aren't that high - they're pretty average for the nation. And the effective property tax rate is even lower due to prop 13. You can actually search this on many property tax websites - on average the effective tax rate…

Yeah I've read that CA is fairly nervous about another big tech crash as so much of their revenue right now is related to IPO's and stock awards that are worth a lot.

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

#68

Post by kazen44 »

atonse wrote: post #16
jdhn wrote: post #3

If the state wins, I wouldn't be surprised if Lyft and Uber pulled out, or at least increased their fares by a substantial amount.

That's ok. They're welcome to pull out. But they won't. Time and time again we see that business rather just raise their fares and make money than pull out of large markets. They are after all money-driven.

The brussels effect[1] is a good argument for this. People said the same thing with GDPR, labour laws and enviromental laws.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect

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

#69

Post by listenallyall »

navigatr wrote: post #57
listenallyall wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? At EWR a few weeks ago while waiting for luggage, I wandered over to the taxi stand. The quoted fare (there was no line, by the way) was twice that of either Uber or Lyft to the same destination.

I commute in NJ and used ride hailing apps until it was just cheaper to use taxis. I wouldn't use any liaison service at an airport, they're going to charge an arm and a leg for the purported convenience. Edit: I'm not doxxing myself, sorry. I'm within commuting distance of NYC.

Maybe if you stated what city/region, your anecdote would be more convincing. NJ is a small state but that's still nearly 10,000 square miles.

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

#70

Post by jdnenej »

throwaway35784 wrote: post #65

Or it could be about protecting employee rights against exploitative corporations who flout the law for profit. Edit: and society for that matter. See Al Capone, a murderer, being finally arrested for tax evasion as an example.

Nah it's ok. Everyone here lives in a privileged position where they will never end up working less than minimum wage for uber so the only thing that matters is a slightly lower cost no matter what the cost to others is. Also uber is a hip and trendy startup so they can do no wrong!
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