[whack]

That comes out to a guaranteed $73k/year, even if you take 3 weeks of vacation. For a family where both parents are driving uber, that comes out to a family income of almost $150k/year. Considering the only skill you need is the ability to drive a car, that's insane.

[SilasX]

They only guarantee gross pay -- that figure doesn't include Uber's cut or operating expenses[1][2].

Together, that would make your taxable income something like 60% of the figure.

[1] http://therideshareguy.com/what-to-make-of-the-2016-uber-hou...

[2] And seriously, phrasing the guarantee as before their own cut? Come on, guys.

[calvinbhai]

I cannot understand, why even highly educated people fail to make this distinction between gross pay and the net pay.

If that "provided you accept certain amount of rides" keeps increasing since more people will make use of such subscriptions, the operating expenses (fuel + wear and tear) continues to increase.

[koolba]

Plus gas. Plus depreciating your car. Plus paying your own benefits. Plus 1099 double taxation.

Yes that's pretty disingenuous.

[linkregister]

After deducting the IRS per-mile amount, the 1099 double taxation drastically drops.

[the_watcher]

> And seriously, phrasing the guarantee as before their own cut? Come on, guys.

I see your point here and am annoyed by this tendency, but to be fair, in the US, this is pretty common. After all, salaries are reported pre-tax, despite a $100K salary meaning wildly different post-tax nets depending on where in the country you live.

[SilasX]

I wasn't objecting to pre-tax, I was objecting to pre-Uber's-cut. It's like if I said "I'll pay you $1200/week to work for me" and when your paycheck comes it's only $1000 (pretax) and I say, "oh yeah, that's my finder's fee".

Nothing wrong with a finder's fee. Lots wrong with promoting the pre-fee value.

[SilasX]

If you're still following, I want to give a more thorough response, since I don't think my other one got to the core of your point.

I think your point is that it's common practice to not mention all kinds of add-ons when listing prices, so there's nothing particularly unusual about Uber doing it, even if we'd prefer everyone to agree to stop doing it.

But even so, I think there's a big difference: in the case of taxes (retail or labor), there's a valid defense: "I don't know tax rates in your municipality", "I don't know how many deductions you have or what your family income is". Even so, when paying a vendor, you know how much you're deducting from their payments for yourself, so you don't really have an excuse for reporting a figure that includes a part that you know you have to personally take out.

The scumminess would be more obvious if Uber e.g. claimed that rides in a certain interval would get a 10% bonus, without also mentioning that they increased their take to cover it all. It would no however, be scumy if they simply failed to mention that "oh, this might push you into a higher tax bracket".

[rhizome]

It's like saying the income of a waiter is equal to the check totals they serve.

[SilasX]

Thanks, that's a better example, though with a more extreme difference: "Come work at ElegantPlace! Pull in $2000 a night!" -> "Hey, I only got 400." -> "What? Your tables definitely paid 2000."

[hkmurakami]

The catch is that the guarantee promotion won't last forever. We all put our fates in others' hands to some degree as employees, but this definitely turns it up a notch to be a relatively unskilled worker depending on artificial temporary subsidies to set up your life.

An analogous example is Japanese salarymen working many dozens of hours of overtime per month, becoming dependent on those extra hours and extra pay, structuring their life based on this inflated amount. When the financial crisis hit and firms tightened up, reducing or outright barring overtime work, these families suffered.