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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

#81

Post by IanCal »

subsaharancoder wrote: post #71
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.

Curious, in which world has taxation ever been for the benefit of the employee?

Taxation is, broadly, spent on citizens and citizens benefit from that. I pay taxes that cover the police as well as the schooling that lowers the chance of people around me having to resort to crime.

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

#82

Post by privateSFacct »

navigatr wrote: post #50
kapuasuite wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

These talking points died in 2016. Now that Uber isn't subsidizing rides with investor's money and raised their fares, Uber is actually more expensive than taxis in NJ. There's no reason ride hailing companies need to violate labor laws to do business.

Those talking points are 100% true.

Uber started in San Francisco. You could not get a cab on the weekend for any amount of $. You could not get a cab to come to the "tough" neighborhoods. This is 100% fact. I once called 4x and was told one was coming - falsely (I did live in what was then a "bad" neighborhood). My roommate walked across the entire city.

Uber started with licensed transit vehicles - now called uber black. It was only when other folks started doing private party cars that they copied that with UberX (oddly they briefly had some moves towards pushing for enforcement against the unlicensed folks but saw that customers didn't care).

But the underlying issues - incredibly bad service (talking on phone, smoking, credit card machine "broken") and lack of availability - despite the industry being "regulated" were VERY real. That's what got them going.

The other reality - they have FORCED the taxi industry to up their game. You can almost always now pay with credit cards in a taxi, you can call a taxi with an app, you can sometimes even review your taxi driver.

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

#84

Post by mtnGoat »

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 cant even make the logic jump to compare these too. Uber isn't just a place people post about needing rides and then pick from one of the respondents.

hardly comparable.

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

#85

Post by longmarks »

subsaharancoder wrote: post #71
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.

Curious, in which world has taxation ever been for the benefit of the employee?

Health care, roads, education, police, unemployment benifit, child care... where do you think taxes go that DOESNT benifit the employee?

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

#86

Post by mtnGoat »

fortran77 wrote: post #35

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.

yes this is true, but when you are an employee the goverment gets slightly more money because of things like FICA.

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

#87

Post by paulie_a »

In guessing they will just get another round of investment when running an illegal taxi business at scale...I mean disrupting. Oh well I don't mind the subsided rides. The drivers have been very pleasant and I'll hate going back to cabs when this came party ends

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

#88

Post by chillacy »

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.

Yea but even if some cases are net beneficial, part of the whole "rule of law" thing is to avoid that.

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

#89

Post by epc »

listenallyall wrote: post #56
navigatr wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These talking points died in 2016. Now that Uber isn't subsidizing rides with investor's money and raised their fares, Uber is actually more expensive than taxis in NJ. There's no reason ride hailing companies need to violate labor laws to do business.

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.

Were you going to NYC (or anywhere in NY)? NY and NJ do not have a reciprocity agreement, so taxis from NYC are allowed to charge 2x the fare between NYC and EWR and the same for NJ taxis to NYC. Uber/Lyft can pickup / dropoff in either state and don't appear to operate under the same restrictions.

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

#90

Post by Retric »

Shivetya wrote: post #40

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 indust…

This must mostly be penalties for not paying any taxes for 4 years. Unemployment in New Jersey is taxed at 0.3825% of the first 34,400$ of income so it cap’s at 132$/employee per year. The other tax is uncapped but at ~1/9th the rate.

Nationwide Walmart has 2,300,000 US employees. If they are paying an average of 150$ each nation wide on similar taxes that’s 345 million per year. However, I doubt even 20 million of that is in New Jersey.

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