[jdmichal]

OK, lets take as granted that the service is actually being provided by the drivers and not Uber, who is just acting as a facilitator of the payment. I would still argue that they should have owed taxes all along, because even in that case they are providing a service. It's just that the service they are actually providing is to the drivers -- matchmaking and payment collection. So the cut they take from the drivers should have been taxed all along.

[jimmywanger]

The verbiage says the GST applies to goods and services bought in Canada. Also there's some sort of credit you can deduct, which bears further looking into, based on the goods and services you consume and pay GST on.

Basically, the taxation law is unclear, because you could easily argue that the service is purchased in the United States, where the Uber servers and the internet connections are. In that case, we're talking about Uber not really being a Canadian company, just that it has subcontractors working in Canada, making it exempt from taxes.

It seems like a lot of people have already decided whether or not Uber should be paying taxes, and now are retroactively applying logic to justify their original decision.

[jdmichal]

> ... you could easily argue that the service is purchased in the United States...

I could support that view, as long as they then pay taxes on that income in the US. I don't personally like the idea of shifting the money like that; I think eliminating such tactics would do a lot to fix tax havens. But at the same time I also recognize it as a pretty common and typically legal tactic for tax purposes.

The EU, for instance, closed that hole with the law that VAT taxes will be paid based on the customer's location. If such a law existed in Canada, then Uber wouldn't be able to argue that the purchase was made in the US.

> It seems like a lot of people have already decided whether or not Uber should be paying taxes, and now are retroactively applying logic to justify their original decision.

I agree, though I hope you weren't applying that to me. I was taking Uber's view as a given, but to me it still seemed that taxes would be owed for services rendered. Just that it would be services rendered to the drivers, not to the riders.