Rental car companies have been waging a quiet legislative war against start-ups

Re:Rental car companies have been waging a quiet legislative... by Spooky23 on Monday April 02, 2018 @09:27AM (#16734259)

Hertz actually owns cars and has to follow the law. The "startup" methodology is to shift everything to schmuck who owns the car.

Presumably, if the car owners can rent the cars for less than Hertz, and Hertz has the buying power and scale to buy and maintain thousands of cars for less money than you or I, these individual car owners are either eating costs due their own ignorance, or failing to do things like maintain them properly or follow the relevant law.

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Re:Rental car companies have been waging a quiet legislative... by notyourday on Monday April 02, 2018 @09:55AM (#16734467)

Hertz does not own cars. One of gazillion of Hertz affiliated companies owns cars that Hertz markets and rents to customers.

The marketing and rental process is stuck in the early nineties.

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Re:Rental car companies have been waging a quiet legislative... by gamblor956 on Monday April 02, 2018 @01:23PM (#16736736)

Hertz operates both Hertz-owned facilities (usually airport facilities) and franchised facilities (usually neighborhood facilities).

Hertz actually owns its cars, at least at its Hertz-owned facilities. http://ir.hertz.com/2014-11-14-Hertz-Announces-New-U-S-Renta...

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Re:Rental car companies have been waging a quiet legislative... by notyourday on Monday April 02, 2018 @02:18PM (#16737467)

Pop quiz:

which one do you think is hertz in NYS?

HERTZ LOCAL EDITION CORP.

HERTZ LOCAL EDITION TRANSPORTING, INC.

HERTZ MANAGEMENT & EQUITIES CORP.

HERTZ MARKETING, INC.

HERTZ NY LLC

HERTZ REALTY INC.

HERTZ SYSTEM, INC.

HERTZ TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

HERTZ TECHNOLOGY (DELAWARE)

HERTZ TRANSPORTING, INC.

HERTZ USA INC

HERTZ VAN LINES INC.

HERTZ VEHICLE FINANCING LLC

HERTZ VEHICLES LLC

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Re:Rental car companies have been waging a quiet legislative... by Spooky23 on Monday April 02, 2018 @02:43PM (#16737794)

Companies using different legal entities for risk or tax purposes is common in any area of business with lots of tangible assets. Whatever the Hertz holding company is, it controls everything. There's no meaningful comparison to a startup with random people owning title to cars.

Same thing when you walk into a CVS. "CVS Elm Street, LLC" isn't meaningfully distinguishable from CVS/Caremark, the parent.

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Re:Rental car companies have been waging a quiet legislative... by notyourday on Monday April 02, 2018 @03:51PM (#16738593)

They do this for liability purposes, not for tax purposes so it is exactly the same. The goal is to separate the revenue obtained from renting cars from the cars that are being rented so in event of a lawsuit the biggest assets (cars) are protected.

> Same thing when you walk into a CVS. "CVS Elm Street, LLC" isn't meaningfully distinguishable from CVS/Caremark, the parent.

Very very very different. What you are describing here is done for the tax purposes to segregate revenues subjected to different tax rules to guarantee that BlahTown which has one CVS in it and one CVS right outside of it cannot claim CVS needs to pay 1% on the sales done from a CVS outside of BlahTown.

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