Uber, Taskrabbit, other Silicon Valley darlings urge Europe not to screw their business Uber, AirBnB, Taskrabbit and another 44 online businesses built around the "sharing economy" have written to the European Union urging politicians not to limit their development through new laws. In a letter [PDF] addressed to Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte, currently president of the EU, the companies argue that they are " …
And of course, the US Market is not exactly friendly towards foreign companies attempting to "disrupt" the market and redefine paradigms and all that nonsense, especially if an established US Company is already operating in that area.
But it's fine to expect us to let them redefine all paradigms with out of the box disruptive blue sky innovation.
"based on a legal framework"
"based on a legal framework of settled law"
FIFY
Silicon Valley is populated by people who would melt down their own grandmother for the silver in her hair. So, you might want to welcome them with a few hints on the local European culture ...
a) You have "Taxes".
b) The Slave Trade was abolished 200 years ago and the law covers all but the most informal "no poach" agreements.
c) They will probably ask if you are using the newest Magna Carta version. Just breathe deeply and say "yes". The rest of the conversation will make you very sad.
Good luck.
I would have a bit of sympathy, if such businesses actually followed existing law. At the moment, it seems that most Uber drivers in Germany, for example, are driving illegally, as they have no commercial driving licence and therefore are uninsured to carry passengers - insurance is a legal requirement to operate a vehicle on public roads.
Stop trying to use your VC cash to avoid and ignore existing laws. Your "disruption" is mostly illusionary and your business models thinly disguised races to the bottom.
Get thee behind me - our politicians are just a fraction less buyable than the average yank one.
They should simply respect the local laws.
Fight them when those laws are protectionist, (which is the case re taxis in much of the USA and Europe), but in the UK they tend not to be. In the UK Uber has jumped through the same Private Hire hoops as normal companies, but AIRBnB in London is a different kettle of fish - too many properties are vansihing from the proper rental market, and it's not London has many spare. That's why there's a 90 rule, but the council lacks the information to enforce it.
"Services that provide a platform for the short term rental of properties must keep a log of all bookings and supply those details to the local council on request, and HMRC once per year".
Councils with property issues - London, some other big cities - would avail themselves. In most of the country they wouldn't.
I'd also have a simple law that creates liability in law for any business that facilitates short term (up to one month) lets. That would essentially read "if a guest is subject to an event that leads to a claim and it is found that the landlords insurance is insufficient, the booking facilitator becomes liable." The very next day you'd see AIRBnB requiring all landlords to provide statements from their insurance companies confirming that paying guests are covered.
I understand that quarterly reporting to HMRC is coming in and that for some it might even move to monthly for the VAT return. As long as the rules, including planning laws (and 'zoning') as those on the wrong side of the pond might have it are observed, in full we might have a more receptive attitude to being told we have it all wrong all the time.
Perhaps they should also be told that our Wyatt Earps are less tolerant of scoff law types and that little people don't become bigger because they like to play with guns.
they are most definitely NOT part of a "sharing economy". A sharing economy is peer-to-peer. These outfits are pure centrally switched corporations whose main motto is "profits before law, or ethics, or morals". So just like every other corporation. Except people like you keep calling it a "sharing economy".
It's kind of like calling Microsoft "open source" - inaccurate as fuck and misleading as hell.
Stop it, el Reg. You're better than that. Even on Fridays. Which this isn't.
Well put. Also, if they need waivers in order to succeed, then they are not really competitive. Which suggests a flawed business model. And if your business model is flawed or outdated, doctrinal capitalism theory gives you two options: 1) find a better, working business model 2) roll over and die
Yes, for the love of god YES! Can we please stop calling this crap 'sharing'. Or perhaps we should just unilaterally redefine the word share. Now it can mean doing something with an expectation of compensation. So, for example, the government 'shares' their roads with me and I pay taxes. The supermarket 'shares' their food with me and I hand over my credit card. Kandy from the local 'dance studio' 'shares' 'private lessons' with me and I throw wads of cash at her.
Ex Taxi drivers .. they start the service , here in Montreal , don't pay taxes , screw up the real taxi drivers , their Uber drivers have no licence and pay no fees for their business , no permits nothing screwing the worker that feeds his family with his taxi, that is Uber drivershave no legal right ( the industry is ruled by law here ) to offer rides . Really
And they ask we let em do whatever the hell they want without following the laws and not paying taxes ? Yeah LIKE HELL
And they feed their families too. In any case, OK I'm not in Montreal, but in Shanghai and in many other cities people hail with apps. If you don't have the app you are screwed, as I am in Shanghai can't use the app don't speak Chinese. So they don't stop because they already have a customer pickup even though it's empty. How is that any different from uber, except more expensive? If cab drivers weren't on their phones all day getting the next app pickup I might agree, but until then cabs are just uber by another name to me.
One of the commonest warnings issued by Australian government travel-advisory site Smart Traveller to Australians travelling overseas is to ensure you only use legal authorised taxis because of the risk of fraud and robbery. The usual official warning is something like this:
Tourists have been robbed and assaulted when using unregistered taxis. Use of a prepaid taxi ticket on arrival at the airport or taxis from registered taxi ranks may reduce the risk of robbery. Official taxis are generally required to have their photographic licence displayed.
Countries in which criminals use fake taxis to kidnap and rob tourists would be at serious risk from services like Uber. Certainly such criminals would take advantage of Uber's system without question. Anyone who travels to a foreign country and uses non-official taxi services is seriously asking to get robbed.
The original concept of a sharing economy is essentially based in the concept of "I have more of this than I personally need, why don't you and I trade our extras between us."
The only sharing economy these companies engage in is the fact that they have more bovine fecal matter than most of the governments world wide. So, they'd like to trade that excess with the government(s) so that the governments can offer up more of their excess. Typically that excess is unemployed folk trying to find some way to put a penny in their pocket. << Yes I wholeheartedly agree that the Uber/AirBnB/whathaveyou lot are part of the race to the bottom >>
Uber does not manage to cover itself in glory as the famous "$1 million in liability" coverage seems to keep vanishing from the cases where the Uber customer needs the coverage. AirBnB is getting some serious flack in places around the Med for not fact checking the conditions of the host's properties match the offered details.
In almost every case where a liability issue has come into play these companies have retreated with the "Oh, we aren't a (taxi/hotel/restraunt/whathaveyou) company, we're just a service that connects clients to providers of service" -- and this gets them out of paying taxes that are relevant to the service.
<up here in the frozen north, taxi services pay specialized taxes to the local municipalities, over and above the licensing fees and such - part of what the fellow above from Montreal was trying to point out, hotels often have to pay licensing fees that relate to the facilities they offer such as bars and lounges, or restraunts etc>
We cannotjust ignore the fact that local taxes are being avoided at every step of the process that these companies are engaging it. This does nothing to improve *anyone's* lifestyle since all these little bits add up to money *fleeing* the local economy back to the venture capitalists that have over-invested in systems that are designed from the ground up to avoid paying
a) real world, local wages
b) real world, local taxes
c) real world, local benefits/pension funds/socialized health care costs
d) real world corporate taxes.
I.E - -these companies can *sell* themselves to a lot of folks by saying "we can show you how to do what you do, and reduce your overhead" == by just not paying *anything* like most folks on the ground do.
What does this cause -
Since large amounts of local taxes that would normally (okay - lets be honest here - most of them don't get spent spectacularly well and in some cases are likely utterly wasted but) be applied by the municipality or federal government to support the people of that city or country in some way, say maintaining roadways, or municipal sewage systems, or keeping the local hospital stocked with bandages or some such, are now no longer available for those things, those things will go away. And now **everyone** else in that country, city or some such will either have to pay for those services directly, or by paying much more in taxes. So --
Uber and Airbnb are not about "sharing" economy.
They are utterly and completely and totally about STRIP mining the economies of every country they can con into the act.
Laws work both ways.
If a taxi company is properly licensed, it's cars and it's drivers properly registered and checked, it is not really the company's fault if something goes wrong. Their liability is limited.
If a taxi company isn't licensed, it's cars are an unknown quantity and it's drivers are simply someone at the end of an email address, who is to blame if something goes wrong? And if the money flows through Uber's systems then the customer's contract is with Uber, not the driver. That sounds like it should attract full liability.
To dodge such liability they'd have to use some pretty strong arm legal shenanigans to deter litigation. As a victim you'd not want to be dealing with that too at a time when you want some redress.
I've just taken a look at this page - it doesn't even say that they take any steps to verify the identity of a driver.
Also there's something for the ASA there too. They claim to make safer cities. They cannot substantiate that. And judging by the videos online of fights between Uber drivers and passengers, the complete opposite would seem to be the case.
This page has a list of bad Uber stories...
Back in the early 1980s there was a constitutional court decision that derived data protection as a basic right. So it essentially it's the same as the right for property or the right to maintain your body integrity.
Those "Sharing Economy" companies essentially want the legal equivalent of organ donation squads. Just like I have the right to not be cut open by someone, I do have the right to not have to give my data to someone.
So that's 47 companies whose business model is :
- use poor schlubs to do someone else's job and skim your profits off of their work while claiming that they are not employed by you
- remain based outside of the country and claim that your revenue is not taxable because "Internet"
- avoid any and all liability by claiming that you have nothing to do with any issue that can arise since you are just a "facilitator"
In other words, 47 sleazebags who take the money and refuse all responsibility. They actually make Ebay look good again.
The Dutch Prime Minister was in Silicon Valley a week ago and didn't bother to meet ANY of these companies. Instead he wasted time with companies already established in the Netherlands and used tax payer money for a nice California vacation.
No one from these companies was even invited to events held in his name.
Shameful, really.
A tax inspector flew in to this small community and called a taxi.
The driver was surprised when his fare asked to go to the taxi-driver's own address. After not getting any reply at the door he asked to be returned to the airport and the driver told him, "That guy is never in!". It could only happen here, one of the joys of living remotely :)
As for Uber etc. I agree with the posters above, these multi-national tax avoidance scammers must be stopped. Keep it local! (I have for you special price on cheap clams or lobster)
So the objection is that they use exactly the same tax avoidance approaches used by every other major company? How is Amazon (based in Luxembourg for tax purposes), or Apple (Ireland) any different? Or how about a good old traditional company Experian (Ireland), Johnson and Johnson (Ireland), or IKEA (Luxembourg)?
By all means we should cut back on this, but I can guarantee that the tax avoided just by the five companies named above is 100 times the tax avoided by all 47 companies in this list.
Why does the EU even allow off-shore companies to lobby OUR politicians. OUR politician are there to represent US! It was reported recently that Google was the largest EU lobbying spender. If this isn't corruption I don't know what it is!
Our politician should be deaf to these people!
Unless they will:
1) Respect and abide by European Laws
2) Pay their full taxes, in-country
3) Operate as any in-country business would in a free-market, competitive manner
I look forward to helping wreck their business plans! I'm one of 100's of thousands actively screwing Uber and I'd do the same to other companies!
I have a new business model that will bring garment manufacturing back to the country. After getting substantial VC backing, I will start by hiring children under 16 years old and pay them an apprentice wage half that of the legal minimum wage. To save money on maintenance, I plan to remove all safety guards on machinery so it is easier to replace belts and lubricate moving parts saving money spent removing and replacing such devices. Workers will be locked in the building durning their shifts to minimize loss of productivity. Toilet breaks will be limited to 2 per day. Any further needs will have to be accommodated by using a bucket at their workstation if this does not interfere with the job at hand. Each shift is 10 hours and workers will "clock out" after 8 hours and show no more than 40 hours per week on official time cards. Buildings will only be cooled if the inside temperature exceeds 110degF. Heating will be turned on when inside temperatures fall below 10degF.
I'll instigate more cost savings measures in the future without notice and Share the gains among the shareholders in the company.
Remember that building where the owners added 2 additional floors without permits or engineering and then stacked a load of machinery on top? When big cracks appeared in the lower floors and workers voiced their concerns, the owners told them that anybody that didn't turn up for work the next day would be fired. Well, they didn't want to lose their jobs and lost their lives instead when the building collapsed. Laws and regulations have evolved over the years to address serious workplace issues. When a company such as Uber comes along and flouts those laws, there should be repercussions. Of course they can be cheaper than traditional firms; it costs money to maintain compliance with business regulations.
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