Disruptive technology good. Not paying fair share of taxes bad.

I love disruptive technology like UBER.  But I really don’t like them using a gap in EU and UK tax rules to avoid incurring sales tax on the booking fees it charges drivers in Britain.   

It means I have to pay more tax to keep the hospital, police, fire service, roads, army, etc. going.  In an article in The Guardian a year ago it was noted that “Uber’s main British business paid only £411,000 in tax last year while the commission fees from thousands of drivers in the UK disappeared into a controversial tax structure in the Netherlands”.   

How does Uber do it?  Well, it avoids having to charge British value added tax on its booking fees by treating each driver as an individual business and then billing drivers across EU borders from its Dutch subsidiary, using an EU VAT provision called the “reverse charge”.  Easy when you know how.   

But you and I don’t have that luxury when it comes to choosing how much tax we would like to pay.  And where.  If UBER don’t pay the same taxes as their competitors do, that mean you and I have to pay more to fund nurse’s police etc.   

So disruptive technology, yes.  Creatively playing the tax system that means the rest of us have to pay more of because they don’t. No!