Uber has swerved paying millions of pounds to the UK exchequer under Rachel Reeves’s new “taxi tax” after the ride-hailing app rewrote contracts with its drivers.
The move came as rules announced in November’s budget took effect, which adjusted how VAT is payable on minicab fares and would have resulted in the whole Uber fare becoming subject to the 20% sales tax.
In November, Reeves told the Commons the changes would end up “protecting around £700m of tax revenue each year”.
However, updated terms issued to Uber drivers from January 2026 mean the technology firm will act as an agent, rather than as the supplier, of transport services outside London. The move means drivers make a contract directly with their passengers – so they must charge any VAT due on the fare, while Uber only adds VAT to its commission.
Garbage Company.
Do you just voluntarily give the government money that you aren’t legally required to pay?
Tell me more about how taxes are bad and corporations deserve the right to avoid paying them while benefiting from the countries they operate in.
I’m not saying that taxes are bad. I’m saying that if the government says “there’s a new tax you have to pay if you do that” and you say “ok, then I won’t do that,” you have done nothing wrong. You have a duty to obey the law, but no duty to maximize government revenue.
Oh yeah, totally not wrong to change the legal definitions of your contracts the day new legislation comes out designed to claw back the taxes you have been avoiding the whole time without that new legislation.
Can you please take your corporate ski poling else where?
This isn’t the same.
They were legally required to charge VAT on the whole fare but they found a loophole which passes the commitment onto their drivers.
It requires a unilateral change to every driver’s contract which is a serious abuse of the power difference in the employer/ employee relationship. This is only allowed due to another legal loophole which enables them to dodge employer commitments by claiming that they aren’t employees.
I suppose I don’t give “loophole” the same moral weight that you do. Even if this was not intended to be legal, if the law as written permits it then the blame is on the government for passing a law other than the one intended to pass, not on Uber for taking action in accordance with the law.
(Moral obligations can exist without being legally required, but taxes are a legal construct and there is no such moral obligation to pay them which extends beyond the legal one.)
Bullshit dude. Uber has been playing games like this for the entire time they’ve been a company.
“They’re not employees, they’re contractors” has just moved on to “they’re independent operators and we’re facilitating your contract with them.”
Stop simping for this company that should get their ass shut down for these games they keep playing.
There is moral, there is legal, and there is ethical.
This may have been moral, as well as legal, but it sure as shit wasn’t ethical.
So there’s a thing called a w2 where employers will extract a percentage of your paycheck each cycle and send it to the IRS and you can only get a chance of getting a tax return by submitting signed documents in accordance with the tax laws. So yes I believe many many people pay extra taxes, semivoluntary.
How are Uber drivers going to collect VAT on fares? I though Uber determined the price of a ride. Is it different in the UK?
The move means drivers make a contract directly with their passengers – so they must charge any VAT due on the fare, while Uber only adds VAT to its commission.
That doesn’t answer my question, I don’t think at least. Where in Uber->Driver->Rider is this VAT that drivers are supposed to collect going to be added into the fare if Uber is only adding VAT for for its commission?
This is dumb. Why fiddling with the rules and stealthily taxing the working people when you can tax wealth. Also claiming to cut cost of living while doing the opposite…
