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Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

How could cutting drivers pay without cutting prices to increase demand raise revenue? It would raise profit possibly or in Uber’s case reduce losses.

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The cost to Uber users is not the same as revenue to Uber corporate. Uber corporate revenue is net of driver pay.

revenue is all monies before any kind of expense...

While money after expenses (“profit” to the layman) is “income”

You pay Uber and Uber pays drivers. Revenue by definition is money that Uber gets before expenses.

Uber does not pay drivers. Passengers pay drivers who pay Uber to use their platform (otherwise they'd be employees which Uber is fighting to avoid).

That may be how Uber wants to phrase it, but I'm pretty sure the thing that shows up on my CC statement is Uber, not the driver's name... IE, if they're claiming that, it's a legal fiction. Whether that legal fiction would stand in court is up to the court.

> I'm pretty sure the thing that shows up on my CC statement is Uber, not the driver's name

That just means that Uber is acting as a payment processor for the driver. If you buy an app or make an in-app purchase in the Google Play Store then Google's name appears on your statement; that doesn't make the app publisher Google's employee. The same goes for non-app vendors using Google Pay or similar services such as PayPal. The point of Uber is to connect riders with drivers and provide standard systems for payment and review—the actual transportation is up to the users.

Uber paying drivers does not make the drivers employees. When I have worked as a software developer as a 1099 contractor and someone bought the resulting software, does that mean that the customer who bought the software was paying me? Would the payment for the software be counted as revenue for the company?

When I was a part time fitness instructor, I taught at corporate gyms where the employees had free memberships. I got a 1099 every year from the gym. Did the employees pay me? Would that be an expense of the corporation?

Currently the prevailing legal arguments against Uber attempt to categorize drivers as employees, not contractors.

There're like three sub-threads to your comment now of people getting it wrong. What you are describing is Gross Bookings. If you don't believe me, Uber's quarterly financial results are here and you can see for yourself.

https://investor.uber.com/news-events/news/press-release-det...

This is not how the actual GAAP accounting works for a company like Uber. The total the customers pay is referred to as bookings. There was a similar issue with Groupon when that was the hot stock of the day:

https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/groupon-changes-its-...

They increased their share of the passenger revenue, taking a greater percentage. Uber defines drivers as consumers of their app, not employees.

And on their P and L they also count as expense “driver incentives” where they pay drivers more than what riders pay for a ride.

For any less shady business, drivers would be considered contractors for Uber. Uber is merely trying to get around riders being considered employees.

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