Uber's statement was that the individual drivers are responsible for that sort of thing. Wink, wink.
What's worse 75% of them were receiving various types of government money for unemployed people (which are supposed to be decreased if are able to find a job).
Uber is planning to return to the Danish market -- the Danish spokesperson says they will return "with integrity".
AirBnb however has agreed to automated reporting of who receives rental income in Denmark. If you agree to automatic reporting as a landlord, you get a certain tax discount.
Cash tips paid to the server are essentially invisible to the employer. This is an accepted trade-off in a system where restaurants can pay below minimum wage.
An Uber customer cannot pay cash. They pay Uber first (fare + optional tip) and Uber in turn pays the drivers. So they know with 100% certainty how much money is changing hands. For a company that is worth literally billions, having a basic financial reporting system that calculates the government's cut is not some kind of overbearing regulatory hassle.
The "market" rate is partially set based on those assumptions because employees wouldn't be able to live on what they are paid thus the labor force and thus the company would collapse without an increase in wages.
In both cases its a transfer of wealth from the middle class to relatively rich owners.
The extra cash helps for when business is slow and the server has to report they made the minimum wage to the employer anyway because the employer is responsible for ensuring that the server makes state minimum if the wage plus tips doesn't equal such. Basically the employer will just fire people who make the employer actually do this.
It also helps cover the foregone wages when the employee is working through breaks and lunches even though the half hour lunch is deducted from the employees pay.
In short employers sometimes pay as little as $2 an hour x 24 hours per week.
Since nobody on earth can live on $200 a month some combination of tips from you, government benefits paid for by you, and second or third jobs makes survival possible.
Most of us are not terribly concerned if the server is paying taxes properly and are concerned that the business is basically welfare for inefficient businesses who should probably go under.
The new checks were based on information Denmark had received from the Dutch authorities, where Uber’s European headquarter is based.
Danish tax authorities said in a statement they had checked 1,195 Uber drivers’ tax reports and of those 1,192 have had their tax changed now.
I think Airbnb could do a better job of working with cities to ensure that negative externalities don’t poison the well. But I don’t hold them responsible for the tsunami of demand on both sides of this market. It seems pretty clear that people really, really want this, and I don’t think the right answer is “too bad, stay in an overpriced chain hotel”
As far as I know it's a completely different setup with Taxi companies and their hired drivers that work on comission, compared to Uber that works with private contractors.
Do you need a company to start earning money as a cab driver?
Simplest and cheapest with least risk (and least profit) would be working for an established company using a car owned by someone else.
Note that in Stockholm Uber is a regular licensed taxi company. Any taxi company can operate like Uber and vice versa.
So there are hundreds of taxi companies and Uber is just one and like all the others. Uber cars are registered with the vehicle authority as taxis and have regular meters.
Meaning that you can either:
1. Get taxi driver license and driver for a fleet for a certain % to take home. This basically means that Uber is just one of the systems you use to get customers.
2. Get a taxi driver license, a sole trader company (1 person company) and a taxi operating license. This means you are a contractor for Uber, and pay the 25% comission. --> You do not need a meter --> You do need a specific insurance for taxi business.
So basically if Uber runs a fleet of contractors, it's massively more important than having taxi companies that operate phone-based (as well as app-based) ordering systems. They have massively more overhead than the tiny operations office that Uber needs to operate in any certain city.
As an example: In Stockholm where there are no Taxi mediallions (anyone can be a taxi or car hire service in any way they want as long as they regiser and comply with insurance, standardized meters, and other regulations) and the competition alreay has new cars, app-based booking etc - there is precious little margin for Uber to cut from, compared to a city with medallions, cab shortages, ancient taxi companies that don't offer app hauling/prepayment etc.
So how can Uber make a killing in Stockholm? Answer: they find another regulation to work around. Tax regulation. Taxis are required to enter all fares into the meter and that's reported to tax authorities. Uber drivers are supposed to enter the rides themselves into the meter after completing. The kicker is: there is a huge incentive for the individual driver to under-report the fares, and that incentive also helps Uber. This being revealed will obviously now mean that Uber will be forced to pay an estimated and much higher tax, and the drivers won't be trusted to do this themselves in the fuuture. And this will only mean one thing: Uber will pack up and leave. There is no way they can be competitive (to the extent their investors will want) without breaking either Tax law or Labor laws.