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.
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.)
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.
Bullshit dude. Uber has been playing bullshit 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.