Lyft Accuses San Francisco of $100 Million Tax Overcharge [View all]
Source: Bloomberg
December 24, 2024 at 1:04 PM EST
Updated on December 24, 2024 at 7:38 PM EST
Lyft Inc. accused the city of San Francisco in a lawsuit of overcharging it $100 million for taxes over five years by unfairly characterizing the compensation earned by drivers who use its app as company revenue.
The company said its hometown calculated its taxes from 2019 to 2023 based on the total amount of money that passengers paid for rides. But Lyft said that isn’t how its business model works.
“Lyft considers drivers as its customers,” the company said in the complaint filed in state court. “Accordingly, Lyft recognizes revenue from rideshare as being comprised of fees paid to Lyft by drivers, not charges paid by riders to drivers. Lyft does not treat drivers as employees for any purpose.”
The tax dispute points to a broader, yearslong controversy around how Lyft, Uber Technologies Inc. and other so-called gig economy firms rely on contractors and avoid having to provide employment benefits. The companies have collectively spent hundreds of millions of dollars to settle claims in the US and abroad that they have misclassified workers without reaching a permanent global resolution. In California, drivers were deemed independent contractors under a 2020 initiative that the companies funded and voters approved in 2020.
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-12-24/lyft-accuses-san-francisco-of-overcharging-100-million-in-taxes
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