[kortilla]

> First, you aren't forced to pay any tax, the ride-sharing company is. Businesses like to say that taxes are passed on to their customers, but that's not actually true

It absolutely is in the long run. Reduced margin means fewer competitors and subsequently higher sustained costs for riders. There is little barrier to entry in the “rideshare” market so as long as high margins exist competitors will keep entering with cheaper prices to eat at the margin.

There is no scenario in a competitive market where an input cost is not reflected in the output cost of a good/service.

[runarberg]

idk. I’ve yet to see an industry that doesn’t concentrate to fewer and fewer operators with time, regardless of taxation.

A natural law of wealth accumulation dictates that as trade continues the players with more wealth already, are increasingly more likely to get even more wealth at the cost of those with less. At time of hardship you would expect the less wealthy players to loose the business which eventually concentrates the industry to 2-5 players through acquisition or bankruptcy. Taxation is actually a way to counter this phenomena by means of redistribution.

EDIT: To clarify the above is only true if industries are competing for customers against each other. While a market is growing the growth of one player does not necessarily come at the cost of another. However at some point the market will be saturated and businesses new customers are exponentially more likely to come from a competitor rather then new to the market. At this point the premise holds true.