Canada seeks to end Uber's tax advantage over taxi companies

The fact that they weren&#x27;t paying GST is mind-boggling. The purpose of the exemption is to let someone running a tiny hobby business sell their products without having to deal with tax headaches.<p>The purpose of the exemption was never to let a mega-corporation take the exemption of each employee, multiply it by the number of employees, and pretend that they don&#x27;t need to pay tax.<p>What next? A grocery store taking the $30,000 exemption for each employee working for it? A law firm taking a $30,000 exemption for each legal aide working on a case?

Uber&#x27;s response.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newswire.ca&#x2F;news-releases&#x2F;statement-from-uber-canada-on-the-2017-federal-budget-616953004.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newswire.ca&#x2F;news-releases&#x2F;statement-from-uber-can...</a><p>One interesting note about the press release to the Canadian newswire service, it highlights that Uber was confounded by Canadian Garret Camp.<p>This is set to go live on July 1st so I guess you can watch the data from that point on to see if it has any effect.<p>&gt; The budget statement estimates the change will raise C$3 million in new revenue in the 2017 budget year, rising to C$5 million in the next few years.<p>So this isn&#x27;t really about raising money as $3 million is figuratively a rounding error.

All of this Uber&#x2F;Lyft stuff has me wondering...<p>Instead of making it harder to be an Uber&#x2F;Lyft to match Taxis, why not make it easier to be a taxi? Driving someone around shouldn&#x27;t be so complicated.<p>Regulation, when necessary, is good... but most of what I see around taxi regulation is just money gouging on the part of the state.

TL;DR:<p>The Canadian government realized it could increase​ taxes by appealing to moral outrage, with terms lime &quot;tax advantage&quot; and &quot;loophole&quot;. End the tax advantage by lowering taxes and reducing the size of government? Out of the question.

Using the small supplier exemption seems really doubtful to me. That pushes the tax collection liability on the driver (who can&#x27;t collect taxes, since payment is through Uber app) and the limit for that is 30k$ so a lot of drivers should probably have charged taxes since they may have earned more.<p>In addition, my understanding (not a tax&#x2F;law person) is that the 30k$ would be for the whole fare, not the driver&#x27;s cut.<p>GST rate is 5%... But provincial sales tax could apply, at least in provinces where there is HST (Harmonized Sales Tax, administered by fed gov, divided with province.) HST varies from 13% to 15%. I wonder if we&#x27;ll see provinces going after the drivers for back taxes. Revenue Quebec is notoriously aggressive in going after people for sales tax.

I like using Uber. But I also don&#x27;t like the idea of money flowing out of the country&#x2F;province&#x2F;city into Silicon Valley. I&#x27;d much rather that the money earned by Uber stays within Canada in some form such as a tax or investment by them into our region.<p>Particularly because Uber-like apps are becoming important to public transportation infrastructure. Additionally, taxi revenue coming from tourism remains in the hands of Canadian taxi companies as opposed to Uber resulting in a net positive flow of money into the country.

What I would have preferred is that Canada removing the burden off the taxi companies and let them give competition to Uber in innovation space instead of trying to bribe politicians to act as gatekeepers.

Slowly the price advantage that Uber has by using loopholes fades away.

Why not just cut GST for everybody? Instead of taxing Uber more, tax taxis less. Drivers and Uber still pay income taxes, fuel taxes, relevant tolls right? If they want to simplify taxes -- as they claim, the best way to simplify is simply to eliminate.<p>Lower fares mean more revenue for drivers and Uber and thus more income taxes collected. Removing taxes from goods, means lower prices which means you sell more and then generate more tax revenue. Laffer Curve 101.

The real issue here should be the abuse of the small provider provision &#x27;hobby&#x27; tax code exemption for businesses netting &lt;$30K that provide <i>ride sharing</i>.<p>Uber should fail on both of those counts, but instead the law is changing to end that exemption. This appears unfortunate to me as we could use continued innovation in the ride sharing space.

Same thing is also going on in the UK: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gizmodo.co.uk&#x2F;2017&#x2F;03&#x2F;meet-the-uk-barrister-suing-uber-to-make-sure-it-pays-vat&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gizmodo.co.uk&#x2F;2017&#x2F;03&#x2F;meet-the-uk-barrister-suing...</a>

Isn&#x27;t this the same thing as the dispute in the UK over collecting VAT taxes?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=13921048" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=13921048</a>

isn&#x27;t uber still cheaper than taxi in Canada despite the application of HST now?

Anything that punishes Uber is fine by me.

&lt;parody&gt;The new national budget unveiled Wednesday by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau&#x27;s Liberal government took aim at document processor providers such as Microsoft Word [MSFT], to force them to collect the goods and services tax (GST) on every document created using their software. Trudeau stated, &quot;(The Royal) we are quite disappointed that many attorneys and other value-added providers within Canada are creating documents that result in multi-million (Canadian, but still...) dollar settlements without a tax being gathered on the value those documents add to the case. Why, individual attorneys can download this software right from Microsoft, create documents worth a fortune to their clients, and not pay us a (Canadian, but still...) cent for the use of that software! Each attorney and complainant ends up having to pay us directly, and that creates awareness and complaints from taxpayers - tres horrible, I say.&quot;.&lt;&#x2F;parody&gt;