Posted on 08/27/2015 7:13:20 AM PDT by lowbridge
It's easy to take yellow cabs for granted. Taxis are ubiquitous in the city, moving 500,000 New Yorkers, tourists and business travelers daily.
But what do they really contribute to the local and state coffers? With new competition like Uber and all kinds of assertions and assumptions being made about the value of these businesses, it seemed like a good time to provide New Yorkers with the facts.
In 2015, yellow-taxicab owners, drivers and passengers are estimated to contribute to the city and state:
-$18 million in sales tax through the lease of taxicabs.
-$94 million to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (through a 50-cent per fare MTA surcharge).
-$14 million in a city road tax ($1,000 per car annually).
-snip
No matter how you calculate it, Uber drivers and passengers contribute far, far less than yellow-taxicab owners, drivers and passengers.
Unlike taxis, Uber does not pay a direct MTA surcharge. Unlike taxis, Uber has no requirement to make any of its vehicles wheelchair-accessible. Unlike taxis, Uber does not pay $1,000 a car in city road tax. And Uber pays no medallion or medallionlike fees whatsoever.
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
Sounds like they better scale back their spending then.
Oh no! You can't drive without a 'medallion"...
What does the city charge for them? Last I heard it was $25,000. (each)
So this guy is pissing and moaning about how little tax money the city gets from Uber. What people should get from this is HOW LITTLE TAXI'S COULD CHARGE if they did not have to pay the city all that money
Need a wheelchair cab? call a cab company an request them- dont FORCE all taxis' to be accessable when most of them never have or never will have a wheelchair passenger.
It's this kind of "not giving enoug money to the government" mentality that has gotten us where we are.
That's never on the table with government.
So the argument is that the private sector exists to fund government spending. All the taxes and fees paid to government by the Yellow Cab monopoly are passed on to passengers in the form of higher fares. Uber, on the other hand, allows passengers to spend the money they save in other taxable activities. To me it’s a wash.
So???
What’s the point of the article?
NYC is doomed anyway.
Of course, Uber is bad because it doesn’t pay its ‘fair share’.
I say, ‘reduce your share, government.’
NY medallions are going for about a MILLION bucks each!
http://nycitycab.com/business/taximedallionlist.aspx
Uber is going to the next level as well. About 3-4 weeks ago I saw an autonomous car in my city (they are easy to spot with the whirling cameras on top, plethora of gadgets hanging off the vehicle). I thought it was the local tech university or google. When traffic parted, plastered along the side was “UBER Advanced Research Lab”.
I wonder what Louie DePalma would say about this?
In 10 years there will be no Uber or cab (and a lot fewer truck) drivers. The CEO of Uber was recently quoted saying he could use as many as 500,000 driver-less cars per annum beginning in 2020.
Less tax $$ for DeBlasio to play with. Boo freaking hoo.
I believe that was Clinton euphemism from the 90's of having the government confiscate your hard earned money under threat of fines and jail time.
It’s a ridiculous proposition that Uber’s business practices are just solely as a result of the example of the abuse by bureaucracies in some markets to cause regulatory bloat of livery services.
Taxi service is regulated on a LOCAL level and subject to that municipality’s jurisdiction, no other. Far be it from me to tell NY, yours, or any other community how to run the taxi services. The argument that Uber breeds competition by entering markets and breaking rules is specious at best, certain anti-conservative by dictating to other cities how to run their livery services.
If NY wants to change how they run taxis, let New Yorkers figure it out, not be told by outsiders.
My market has decent livery services and regulations. My market also told Uber to “take an effin leap” in response to their demands and they walked away.
Just because some jurisdictions are liberal, suffer regulatory bloat and may or may not be unfair to competition does not justify an outside corporate influence coming in and breaking local rules and laws because the emotional argument is made. There are many analogous circumstances to be cited....so many I relent on that.
We told Uber to take an effin leap and I say the same to any others that assert they have a right to come here and break our fair and locally-agreed regulations for livery services. Safety, insurance, costs and quality of service are not a problem here and, frankly, none of outsiders’ damn business.
If you don’t like our taxi services and unhappy uber isn’t here, then dont come here or go anywhere else those uber supporters might be dissatisfied. It aint rocket science....
ho-lee crab!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I do not understand this ‘medallion’ business... but it seems like the government got into the protection racket.
Uber is non-Union.
Uber is like America is supposed to be. What we have is like the European hell hole our forefathers escaped.
Yellow cabs don’t contribute, they pass on the money taken from riders who would otherwise spend those funds on something else.
As for NYC, my observations as a frequent visitor were that the regulated taxi industry there was (and is) broken. The so-called “black cabs” and other unregulated limo services have long provided safe, clean, and efficient alternatives to the (over-)regulated Yellow cabs. Even before Uber, I hadn't taken a Yellow cab from Manhattan to LaGuardia in 20 years.
What is your position on eminent domain? Is it fine with you if local governments seize private property for “public” purposes that line the pockets of political cronies?
where is this place you are describing?
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