I know the few times I’ve been to Tainan, Uber wasn’t available.
I’m just curious if, after the changes in regulations for drivers, if Uber has any established presence in the city now.
Yes, they’ve complied with the governments anti-technology laws which went back on their earlier agreement and it’s working as normal. It’s amazing they would bother considering the trouble they’ve had, but it works. There’s another thread about this.
For whatever it’s worth, Uber prices are now in the same ballpark as taxis, except possibly for long trips. The basic aim of the legislation was to eviscerate Uber’s business model in order to preserve the political power of the taxi cartels. Similar situation in many other countries.
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Hmm. I was in Tainan 2 weeks ago and whenever I tried to get Uber (a few times) the app showed me an error message saying ‘No cars available’.
Maybe there were no cars available.
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Errors happen, but it will often show you that if you’re in a less trafficked area.
Maybe I wasn’t clear.
I wasn’t asking about legislation or Uber’s island-wide operations.
I was asking specifically about Uber in Tainan.
for what’s it’s worth, uber’s business model was based on tax evasion and bending the rules to the maximum allowed by law， if not blatantly breaking it.
taxis require registration, insurance and pay extra taxes to be a means of public transportation. uber ignores all these regulations and pretends to be a tech company to avoid paying these levies.
there is no market failure in taiwan that requires uber, taxis are plenty and the entry barrier is low, they didnt solve any problem…
technology has nothing to play here, I use the 55688 app which gives the same service as the uber app.
the taxis from 55688 are clean and provide great service, on par with uber. I support the taxi drivers in this, uber can play by the rules like every one else
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The mods will probably want to move this elsewhere, but I’d say it was more the case that the government wanted to define what their business was, so that it could apply specific laws to them.
While I’m completely on board with the idea of vehicle taxes being paid, insurance being bought, licenses being obtained, etc., I don’t see that it matters who performs these tasks. Uber’s assertion was that the drivers were all self-employed and that they (the drivers) were therefore responsible for vehicle-related compliance. Uber were simply providing a communications/routing app. If the drivers saw that as a win-win situation they could sign up, and if they didn’t, they could do something else (eg., be a taxi driver).
I’m still amazed that anyone finds this a contentious proposition. I believe US and Australian truck drivers operate in a similar environment.
If I set up in business as a vegetable seller I don’t want the government telling me that no, actually I’m in the logistics business because I operate a truck to carry vegetables around. If I sell gardening services I don’t want the government telling me I must register as a farmer and comply with X, Y, Z regulations regarding rice trading and livestock transport.
IMO it was only partially about Uber thumbing their nose at the rich and powerful. The other aspect was that governments in general hate people being self-employed. The great unwashed start getting funny ideas about being masters of their own destiny. In my sector (IT) it is essentially illegal to be self-employed across most of Europe. If you’re a software developer, you are classed by the government as a serf, and you must therefore have a master. Nobody will hire you as a freelancer because both you and they will end up in jail. That’s the primary reason a lot of IT jobs have now gone to remote workers in India and the Philippines - salary is certainly a part of it, but the more pragmatic reason is that employers are actually allowed to hire them on a freelance basis.
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Not my experience. I don’t find their service anywhere near Uber’s, but it’s off topic and we’ve been through this.
Sorry I took things in the wrong direction. My old eyes read Taiwan. The new legislation made it harder for Uber to provide the same service from the same drivers. It required the drivers to get licenced as multipurpose taxi drivers rather than working for rental companies. They got enough drivers to fill the need in Taipei, but in some other cities there may not be enough yet. The drivers have to work with taxi companies to get a taxi plate, and obviously few are anxious to cooperate.
Could you elaborate on that? It’s essentially illegal to be a self-employed software developer/IT worker in most of Europe? Why on earth is that? Just curious as I’ve never heard of this problem…
There’s no single law that actually says “you’ll be jailed if you freelance as an IT contractor”, nor is there any law that states explicitly that you can’t hire one. But there’s a set of other laws that (taken together) have the desired effect.
In Germany and the Netherlands, all contractors have to be employed by ‘umbrella companies’ to avoid falling foul of complex tax and social security legislation, and in practice nobody will engage your services unless you take this route. It is theoretically possible to do it yourself, but in practice you’d have to hire a full-time accountant and a lawyer to do so. Ain’t nobody got time for that - and the State might still assert that you’re not really self-employed. By becoming an employee of an umbrella company, the two contracting parties can carry on with their business in peace, albeit with much higher costs (typically 1000-2000 euros per month).
I’m more familiar with the UK version. “IR35” allows HMRC to unilaterally decide whether you’re self-employed or not. There is no established legal test, which in practice means that they decide that everybody is an employee (of whichever client you happen to be working for). If you decide to ‘go it alone’ and can demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that you’re genuinely self-employed, the government has another set of rules which make it so damn difficult and expensive to be a one-man-band that most people decide it’s not worth the effort. To demonstrate that you’re self-employed, you have to have multiple clients and/or projects of your own.
In all of these cases, the underlying problem is this: the laws are so complicated and opaque that it’s very hard to accurately determine which bit of tax legislation or employment law applies to you - and even if you think you’ve got it right, the State might disagree on a whim, and haul you through the courts or dispense summary justice. In other words, the law is constructed to ensure a high probability of pain if you don’t take the route of full-time employment. State surveillance is so efficient that they will nail you for the slightest error. Hence my assertion about jail time.
This.
By the way you can use Family Mart to book a Taxi in Tainan, usually comes within 5 minutes.
let’s call a spade a spade. uber was not a ride sharing app, it was a taxi app. the drivers were driving around town empty waiting to get called to passengers. the fact its drivers didn’t comply with the regulations of being taxi drivers, allowed them to offer cheaper rate.
the fact uber collected the money, got a cut and paid out the drivers shows they were the operators of this scheme, if they were just an app provider they would sell it to other cab companies.
for example, if i open a business that “connects stock traders with the stock exchange” and call it a “call center” i assume the government will rightly say that i am a stock broker and demand i adhere to the same policies as any licensed business.
Actually I agree. That’s where they screwed up. If they had made the app available with fewer restrictions, and not involved themselves in billing or commissions, they probably would have had a stronger defence.
That’s because a stockbroker is someone who connects stock traders with the stock exchange. There is no ambiguity.
That was the original situation, but the gov’t and Uber came to an arrangement where the drivers would work directly for rental agencies, not independently. Uber complied, and everything was fine and legal. The most recent issue was that, after all that got sorted and investments were made and business carried on, the gov’t reneged on the deal some time later under pressure from the taxi lobby, DPP supporters, and introduced new legislation made the previous arrangement unworkable. Uber drivers had to become taxi drivers. And that’s what they have done or are in the process of doing, those that haven’t given up. In the meantime, the DPP scores unnecessary political points while making Taiwan look unfriendly to tech start-ups.
Not every taxi ride I’ve had was bad, just a lot of them. Few Uber rides were bad. 55688 taxis are hit and miss and their app is screwy. Line is getting in on the game. Maybe competition will force everyone to do a little better. I keep hoping grab will jump into the game too. Still, I can’t get out of a taxi, even an Uber partner, without a sense of ick.
It’s all better than older days in Manila when you asked how to go to somewhere and the answer was it depends on traffic, get in and I’ll tell you when we arrive. Plus tip.
We’re way off topic, maybe the old Uber in Taiwan thread should be opened again if people want to retread the same arguments as last time, but the recent legislation I mentioned leading to shortage of licenced drivers with taxi plates is possibly why there are few in Tainan now.
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I am in Tainan at the moment and neither Findtaxi nor 55688 apps are working. Both apps keeps saying nothing available. Has anyone faced this ?
Tainan Taxi Jimmy Lee 0971320715.
Call or text and he speaks English and love to talk with foreigners and familiar with foreigners can call him twenty-four hours a day.
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Thanks! Will try
Findtaxi works but hard to locate.