4 ms·

Uber drivers buy a car, pay for insurance, gas, etc, and certainly run the risk of losing money. They also have total control over their time and work. They can

Uber drivers buy a car, pay for insurance, gas, etc, and certainly run the risk of losing money. They also have total control over their time and work. They can switch on or switch off anytime they like, and choose whether to accept each ride request. There are lots of reasons to criticize uber. Classifying the drivers as contractors isn't a reasonable one.

mattmanser 11y ago
You are joking right? There are a mass of articles and discussion about this that shows your 'reasonable' classification is in fact 'highly contentious'. Whatever else you say about Uber, it's pretty obvious that the contractor/employees are in a grey area where they have some traits of contractors and some traits of employees.
- dnautics 11y ago
  I think you're missing that the poster's adjective 'reasonable' is modifying the word criticism, not the word classification.
dnautics 11y ago
I agree that "classifying the drivers as contractors is not a reasonable criticism" of Uber. But strictly in terms of the operation of classification, they are in a somewhat grey area. In my opinion, on balance, Uber drivers are more like ICs than they are employees (and by a very wide margin). The problem is the 20 point test is totally ridiculous and doesn't give clear guidelines as to how much to 'weight' each of the criteria and thus gives great leeway for anyone to make a 'strong' claim in either direction by selectively ignoring the points that don't fit their preconceived opinion.
- sokoloff 11y ago
  The federal tax code has to work for literally hundreds of millions of people and billions of situations. The presence of grey areas is a design feature not a bug, IMO. Yes, it can be annoying and frustrating to not know with a bright line test of executable English law code the outcome, but I can only imagine how much worse it would be if we tried to reduce every situation down to exhaustively testable 0/1 pure-white/pure-black codification. The disambiguation is lazily evaluated (sometimes at significant expense) by the tax courts, or you can request an evaluation ahead of time in a private letter ruling (at very reasonable expense). I believe this is still better than eager/greedy evaluation of all situations. Almost irrelevantly, I also think that Uber drivers are significantly more ICs than employees.
HarryHirsch 11y ago
That's creative from Uber, offering their car loan plan, so that their drivers have the opportunity to lose money and are no longer classified as employees as far as the tax man is concerned.
deleted 11y ago
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vacri 11y ago
> and choose whether to accept each ride request. No, not if they're on the clock. Too many rejections and they get shown the door. In any case, this particular activity is rife in the taxi industries, with taxi drivers often refusing to pick up crappy fares.

mattmanser 11y ago

You are joking right? There are a mass of articles and discussion about this that shows your 'reasonable' classification is in fact 'highly contentious'. Whatever else you say about Uber, it's pretty obvious that the contractor/employees are in a grey area where they have some traits of contractors and some traits of employees.

dnautics 11y ago
I think you're missing that the poster's adjective 'reasonable' is modifying the word criticism, not the word classification.

dnautics 11y ago

I agree that "classifying the drivers as contractors is not a reasonable criticism" of Uber. But strictly in terms of the operation of classification, they are in a somewhat grey area. In my opinion, on balance, Uber drivers are more like ICs than they are employees (and by a very wide margin). The problem is the 20 point test is totally ridiculous and doesn't give clear guidelines as to how much to 'weight' each of the criteria and thus gives great leeway for anyone to make a 'strong' claim in either direction by selectively ignoring the points that don't fit their preconceived opinion.

sokoloff 11y ago
The federal tax code has to work for literally hundreds of millions of people and billions of situations. The presence of grey areas is a design feature not a bug, IMO. Yes, it can be annoying and frustrating to not know with a bright line test of executable English law code the outcome, but I can only imagine how much worse it would be if we tried to reduce every situation down to exhaustively testable 0/1 pure-white/pure-black codification. The disambiguation is lazily evaluated (sometimes at significant expense) by the tax courts, or you can request an evaluation ahead of time in a private letter ruling (at very reasonable expense). I believe this is still better than eager/greedy evaluation of all situations. Almost irrelevantly, I also think that Uber drivers are significantly more ICs than employees.

HarryHirsch 11y ago

That's creative from Uber, offering their car loan plan, so that their drivers have the opportunity to lose money and are no longer classified as employees as far as the tax man is concerned.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

vacri 11y ago

> and choose whether to accept each ride request. No, not if they're on the clock. Too many rejections and they get shown the door. In any case, this particular activity is rife in the taxi industries, with taxi drivers often refusing to pick up crappy fares.