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> Businesses like to say that taxes are passed on to their customers, but that's not actually true (depending on the elasticity of demand). If Uber could increase revenue by charging more to cover some new tax, they'd already have done it to increase their profit.

This isn't quite true. If Uber charged more to increase profit, they would lose more customers to competitors who didn't increase their prices.

Taxes can increase costs for (some of) those competitors as well. In that scenario, prices could rise to absorb the tax and there would be less relative change between competitors.

This is important for incentivising 'societal values', e.g. reducing pollution, increasing public health, etc.; either directly by discouraging people from choosing single-occupier taxis like Uber in favour of e.g. trains and buses; or indirectly by causing companies to compete on reducing their harm (and thereby avoiding the tax).

I don't have specific examples to hand, but I recall some companies advocating for such taxes (e.g. a carbon tax), since they want to make bigger improvements, but doing so individually would make them uncompetitive.

> 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.

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.

> First, you aren't forced to pay any tax, the ride-sharing company is.

I am forced to pay taxes for the roads since you can't possibly fund all of the rodes solely by taxing ride-sharing companies.

> Businesses like to say that taxes are passed on to their customers, but that's not actually true.

Eh. Economics is not an exact science so there is no way for me to prove it to you. If you don't believe in that (and have another reason why iPhones are more expensive in higher taxed countries) then let's leave that.

> That's an issue with every public good, from schools to police to public health to courts to real estate records office, etc. None are utilized anything like equally across the population. Yet we chip in and pay for them because we decide, collectively, that they are important for the community.

Then why not subsidize cars, or better yet, offer a free car per citizen? In fact, "we" decided that we should tax cars and maybe we should also tax car usage (gas, roads, pollution, ...).

> Your hair stylist uses them to get to work [...] Imagine your situation if there were no roads.

There should be roads. And private drivers shouldn't get out of paying for them.

> It's a private, for-profit company.

Taxis are private and for profit, yet they are considered public transportation.

>> That's an issue with every public good, from schools to police to public health to courts to real estate records office, etc. None are utilized anything like equally across the population. Yet we chip in and pay for them because we decide, collectively, that they are important for the community.

> Then why not subsidize cars, or better yet, offer a free car per citizen? In fact, "we" decided that we should tax cars and maybe we should also tax car usage (gas, roads, pollution, ...).

OK, why or why not? Are you proposing something?

> There should be roads. And private drivers shouldn't get out of paying for them.

They do pay, via their taxes, which is the generally appropriate way to fund public goods.

I was responding to your proposal that businesses pay extra, via medallions to use the roads, while private drivers use the road for free (ie. no extra). Rather, I am saying that every user of the road should par for it.

Roads are paided for with taxes on gas. So whoever buys gas pays for road repair. Licenses, fees, etc also go towards that system.

No, they aren’t. There isn’t enough money from the gas tax to cover all of the roads. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-02-15/gas-ta...