Massachusetts Will Tax Ridesharing Services To Compensate Taxis

Megalith

Megalith

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Every Lyft or Uber you hail in MA will directly fund the taxis they're competing against. While the money is supposed to improve taxi services, I wouldn’t count on that happening. This development, of course, also makes it harder for ridesharing startups to succeed.

The law levies a 20-cent fee in all, with 5 cents for taxis, 10 cents going to cities and towns and the final 5 cents designated for a state transportation fund. The fee may raise millions of dollars a year because Lyft and Uber alone have a combined 2.5 million rides per month in Massachusetts. The law says the money will help taxi businesses to adopt "new technologies and advanced service, safety and operational capabilities" and to support workforce development. Regulations for how the fee will be collected and a plan for how it will be spent still need to be drawn up, said Mark Sternman, a spokesman for the state's MassDevelopment agency, which will be in charge of the money.
 
Tax, Tax, Tax. Well, at least we the people now have "representation". At least here in New Jersey they don't tax us for food (non-restaurant) or clothes yet.
 
I think we should tax Smart phone for the Babbage Makers also!



cartoons91-babbage-machine-e1394059168334.gif
 
This just goes to show America isn't run by its citizens, its run by money.
 
bucket said:
So Lyft has to foot the bill so that Taxi services can attempt to remain relevant?

Evolve, die or get out of the way. This is bullshit.
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No, not at all. They will succeed of fail regardless of this. However, the state pocketed some money, and ensured a fee that will never be rolled back gets dispersed to "taxi companies". I'm sure plenty of wives of senate and assembly men just went into the "taxi" business so they can collect the check. I say wives, because that will allow them to get whatever minority business owner benefits that are attached to being female. You'll see the majority of the benefits piped to "smaller" businesses that are "most vulnerable" to the scourge of ride sharing. And what's smaller than some politician's spouse with one taxi?
 
In the long run though, $0.20 isn't that much. I'd rather save $10-$20 on the trip and pay an extra $0.20 then be stuck using a taxi.
 
Sounds like same crap law they wanted extra tax'es on blank cd/dvd's so they could hand i over to big corp copy write .
 
You guys notice that the gubmint gets a really nice cut of this "protection fee." I am a huge supporter of the legal livery services such as taxis, but this is just really wrong. What they should have done is made these so called "for hire" services that pretend to be ride sharing services comply with the same rules that every other for hire service is required to meet. Maybe they realized that there would be more money by doing this.
 
Haha, a tax to support a business....and the business only gets 25% of the money collected.


Next they will be telling us the state lottery is meant to help the children!

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How bad a lawyer do you have to be in the Legislator, to even propose such a fucked up bunch of nonsense. Regulate Uber/Lyft to assure Public safety and labor standards, but do not get involved in the competition. Taxi's need to evolve or Die a Death.
 
hockeypro889 said:
In the long run though, $0.20 isn't that much. I'd rather save $10-$20 on the trip and pay an extra $0.20 then be stuck using a taxi.
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The problem is, that the fees and taxes are low enough that people will put up with it, but they'll keep coming. This tax is terrible and will simply prompt legislatures to keep doing it so the state can get more money while the citizens get nickel and dimed.

Not to mention, consumers voting with their wallets and still being forced to support(subsidize) a service they don't want, is also terrible. Imagine if any other retailer or service provider you did business with because you couldn't stand their crappy competitors, was forced to charge you to give money back to the competitor you didn't like in the first place?
 
How can you embezzle or steal millions unless you have budgets of a billion?

Tax-achussetts is our glorious revolution turned on its head. A free market has spoken. The professional politician class cannot abide that. They must quash it so that they can control who wins and who loses. How else will they remain relevant for kickbacks, bribes, corruption and lobbyists?
 
"adopt "new technologies and advanced service, safety and operational capabilities" and to support workforce development."


That line is bullsh*t in a front-loading washer on the spin cycle.
 
Crimson said:
Tax, Tax, Tax. Well, at least we the people now have "representation". At least here in New Jersey they don't tax us for food (non-restaurant) or clothes yet.
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They don't in Mass either. That said, I do not support this new subsidy. IMHO it's just protectionism. Boston is one of those city with restrictive medallion pools for taxi services, so the industry really hate the competition from ride sharing apps. At least this isn't an outright ban of them.
 
lolSocialism :)


I thought you Americans were better than this
 
How are Taxis owned and operated? By private companies or by the state/city?

1) If they're owned and regulated by the state/city, then I can see the merits of this.
2) If they're owned and operated by private companies, then I perceive there to be some mega lawsuits over this because that's direct involvement in hindering competition. Even a small fee, it always starts out small to test the waters then if people don't pay attention it just continues to grow.
 
bucket said:
So Lyft has to foot the bill so that Taxi services can attempt to remain relevant?

Evolve, die or get out of the way. This is bullshit.
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I tend to agree, but, the argument is as follows:

In order to legally operate a taxi in the city you have to own a taxi medallion. Taxi services have had to pay cities and towns for taxi medallions, costing as much as $100k per car at their height.

(The city issues a fixed number of them, and taxi operators can bid for them, and trade them amongst eachother.)

The taxi services argued that it was highly unfair that they had to be subject to this $100k expense per car when the likes of Lyft and Uber weren't.

Since it was a free-market type solution where taxi services traded among each other for decades over these medallions there was no real record of what they paid for them, so they couldn't just "refund" the money, besides the money mostly went between taxi services, not to the city so they came up with this compromise instead.

I don't like where it ended up, but I understand why they did it.
 
^^^
New York City medallions go for north of $1,000,000.

That is NOT free market.

There is no way any new entrant or independent operator can pony up a cool million, just for the "right" to operate a vehicle for hire. If you're a solo operator, and you've got a spare million in your pocket, do you really think buying a single medallion is the best way to invest that money? Of course not.

If you want to start a new fleet (more than just your one vehicle), just try to get a loan for 25 million dollars, just to start out with 25 vehicles.

All the medallion system ensure is that entrenched operators stay entrenched and that it is impossible for new entrants to, wait for it... compete ... with them. Who gets the money from those medallions? Yeah, the politicians. Skim away, men, skim away. Immigrants drive for dirt-wages, while the taxi-fleet owners rake in the profit. The drivers do not own the cars. They lease them from the taxi corporations. Kind of like indentured servitude, but without the end.

In a free market, we'd have things like Uber and Lyft. Are they perfect? No. But, they break the monopolistic hold that the entrenched taxi-corporations have.

I had to take a taxi from LaGuardia to Newark. It was $100. Before tip. That is not a free market price. That is a monopoly price.

Once the government LIMITS competition (which is what medallions do), then the free market dies. The role of government, if there is one in the market, is to ensure open, fair, competition. Medallions are the opposite.
 
The changing landscape has been put into stark relief by the diminishing value of the taxi medallion in once plum markets like New York, where in recent years they proved to offer a better return on investment than gold, oil and real estate.
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Jeez.

Why the hell were medallions even created in the first place? For the sole original purpose of being a permit, the idea sounds terrible for the consumer. Wiki says the medallions were created "to prevent a surplus of cabs".

What the hell happened to capitalism? A taxicab market without medallions would mean more fair prices for the customers instead of having cabbies and cab services be a form of legal extortion. Restricting quantities of medallions and making them not individual-specific created the unintended effect that the medallions are an investment commodity instead of "just a permit".


Restaurants are not able to trade their food inspection permits.
Engineers, surveyors, etc aren't allowed to sell/trade their licenses.

Why the hell are medallions still used? Sounds like they need to die. More cabs, cheaper prices = more competition.
More people would use taxis if the fares were more reasonable.

Let me guess, medallions were created by ex-union folks.
 
kidstechno3 said:
How are Taxis owned and operated? By private companies or by the state/city?

1) If they're owned and regulated by the state/city, then I can see the merits of this.
2) If they're owned and operated by private companies, then I perceive there to be some mega lawsuits over this because that's direct involvement in hindering competition. Even a small fee, it always starts out small to test the waters then if people don't pay attention it just continues to grow.
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There are no city/state run tax services in Mass. Some cities or towns require Medallions to operate. Boston, for example has a limited amount of Medallions in circulation that large taxi cab companies own. they buy and sell them for $500,000 to a Million a medallion between each other.
 
Wikipedia in the article about taxis in New York also mentions:

During the Great Depression, New York had as many as 30,000 cab drivers. With more drivers than passengers, cab drivers were working longer hours which led to growing public concern over the maintenance and mechanical integrity of taxi vehicles.

Which is something that you see increasingly with Uber drivers.

Taxis aren't about free-market capitalism, it's about adding a transportation option for those that can't drive themselves or use mass transit.
 
This is fine as long as they tax the taxi drivers to help pay for horse & buggy operators.
 
westrock2000 said:
Haha, a tax to support a business....and the business only gets 25% of the money collected.


Next they will be telling us the state lottery is meant to help the children!
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They already did that in North Carolina. The "education lottery" supposedly makes hundreds of millions for the schools and yet teachers are still forced to solicit donations for paper and pencils because the school systems won't pay for them.
 
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit.
  • Robert A Heinlein, “Life-Line”,1939
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