Taxi Driver Online

Ah, I see. But not sure where the cash goes, whether it's an automated payment, or whether it's a weekly settle or percentage commission is really what it's all about, as is the case with the whole employment status thing.

It's more a contractual thing and who's contracting with who, and how that all ties in with the private hire operator regimes. As I recall it, the 1976 operator legislation applies to someone 'making provision' for a booking, and I think the issue is how that ties in with the contractual situation, and in turn how that interacts with VAT law.

Which I think is essentially what the article above is saying in the extract quoted below. And clearly Uber wants VAT across the whole trade.

I agree about independent HCDs, because obviously they're contracting directly with customers. But where the HC and mixed circuits figure in all of this, I haven't a scooby, particularly as no operator's licence is required to take HC pre-bookings, and presumably that matter won't be decided by the Sefton case.

And, of course, Scotland has a whole different legislative regime as regards the booking system (which, unlike England, also includes HC circuits.)

But, thinking of it in terms of contractual and economic substance rather than the minutiae of the operators and bookings legislation, at a rough guess I'd say if the London ruling is extended to the whole of England via Sefton, then no reason it shouldn't apply to HC circuits in England, and all circuits north of the border

Yes, but I'd guess it's difficult to legislate for every single different scenario, even just in the cab trade, and they really need to streamline the thousands of pages of tax legislation rather than add to it.

It's a bit like employment law, and the various pieces of legislation dealing with unfair dismissal, minimum wages etc, which has been enacted over several decades. The legislation says all that applies to 'employee', but doesn't actually say what an employee is. Which in turn leads to the employment status question, and whether an individual is an employee or self-employed, which in turn ties in with the taxation issue - PAYE for employees, and self-assessment for the self-employed.

So, essentially it's been up to the courts and case law to decide who's an employee or not, and thus to what extent they're entitled to all the employee rights etc.

The one major change to the employee/self-employed definitions has been the addition of the middle-way 'worker' status. Which, of course, took a Supreme Court judgement of 80 or so pages to decide whether drivers working under *one* booking operation came under the definition of 'worker'.

It can only get a whole lot messier

You could be right, you could be wrong, to paraphrase John Lydon, but I seem to remember only a few years ago, there was talk of lowering the vat threshold to something like £18k? That had a few one man bands sweating, I seem to recall.

But isn’t it ironic, to paraphrase Alanis Morrisette, that the great disrupters from America (we do car sharing, we don’t operate a taxi service) Uber are now saying it’s so unfair? Everyone should pay taxes? Hardly a day goes by and they’re advertising how they pay holiday pay, pension contributions et al, but they had to be dragged through the courts over many years to get there.
And I doubt if £600 million is anywhere near 20% of their turnover over the years they’ve been operating in the UK. Death and taxes, huh?

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Former taxi driver

As far as I can make out, the hearing is taking place this week, so not sure when the judgement is due - you don't 'hand down' a hearing

Maybe someone decided to rewrite that sentence, but forgot to take the word 'hearing' out, and maybe the correct word is 'judgement'.

Or maybe the hearing will take place this week, and the judgement will be 'handed down' later

Or something like that

Thankfully we have the hearing followed by the judgement.

As opposed to the likes of Russia, China and Iran who do it the other way around.

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IDFIMH