In message , at 16:43:29 on Thu, 30
May 2019, JNugent remarked:
On 30/05/2019 15:41, Roland Perry wrote:


JNugent remarked:

*The turnover for someone like Uber or TheTrainline being the
commission* element, not including the money that passes straight
through to the* drivers and Train Companies respectively.

If Uber only received a commission or circuit fee from the driver,
that would be correct and I would certainly not argue with your
proposition.

But how can that correct be in the circumstance where they also turn
over the whole of the fare collected from the passenger
(account-holder) on the spot?
Do they, and send the driver an invoice for their commission later
(end of the month perhaps)?

I assume your "Do they..." was a request for confirmation of what I said.

I was asking for confirmation that they "turn over the whole fare
collected from the passenger, on the spot".

There's two aspects:

The whole fare, and
On the spot.

Yes, Uber do collect the whole of the fare.

No-one ever claimed otherwise. It's what they do after collecting it
which matters.

I don't know what form their subsequent internal accounting procedures
take, but if it were their practice to issue invoices to the driver, I
strongly suspect that we would have heard about that by now.

Therefore you are now agreeing with my proposition that they pay the
driver only part of what they collected from the passenger. Having
deducted their commission.

Whether they pay it "on the spot", or perhaps 'at the end of the week'
or whatever, is peripheral to that particular aspect.

That would nudge them a bit closer to being perceived by the
passenger as a cab company, rather than a booking agent for the driver.

The passenger's view isn't important anyway, but even so, it's hard to
see how "knowing" that Uber issue invoices to drivers [if that were the
case, for which there is no evidence] would affect passengers' opinion
of Uber.

There are two models possible:

Passenger pays for the ride and the whole fare is collected by Uber
and sent to the driver (with Uber being in effect just a form of
merchant services dealing with the card payment). Later, Uber sends a
bill to the driver for his usage of their booking/billing platform.

Or,

Passenger pays Uber for the ride, and they send him (maybe
immediately, maybe later) a piecework payment for having done the
driving aspect.

The perceptual difference being whether the passenger has just
patronised a self-employed driver, or a multi-billion cab company.

TheTrainline, does the train company get paid for the ticket straight
away, or does TTL have 30day (or whatever) credit with them all.
Whatever the answer, their turnover in their published accounts is
just the commission/fee element.

But they are not Uber. And Uber are going to have to argue that the
money they turn over is not part of their turnover.

The two business models are very similar.

Just to be clear about this: if an individual self-employed taxi-driver
(or private hire driver) turned over £85,000 and were honest enough to
report the fact, they would be forced by law to register for VAT and to
charge it on top of the fare.

But turning over £1808 a week (assuming five weeks' non-activity per
annum) would be a tall order. Not so for Uber.

Yes, I think we all understand why the £85k is important.
--
Roland Perry