Uber taxi rival operators in England and Wales will not have to face a 20% VAT charge on their profit margins outside London after the travel company for travel has lost its appeal on Tuesday against a previous sentence.Uber had sought a declaration that competing private taxi operators enter into a contract with passengers, which means that operators must charge 20% of value added taxes (VAT) outside of London, as is required to do Uber.
He brought the case after a sentence of the Supreme Court of 2021 that Uber drivers were workers, making them suitable for the minimum wage and the salary of the holidays and making Uber subject to VAT for races.
Uber tried to have the same terms applied to rival operators and the high court decided in his favor last year. The sentence applied to races in England and Wales outside London, which has a different regulatory regime. However, that sentence was canceled by the Court of Appeal in July 2024 following a challenge by the Delta Taxis private rental operators and the Veezu platform.
Uber then filed an appeal to the Supreme Court, which on Tuesday unanimously rejected the appeal, decreasing that operators are not required to enter into a contract with passengers.
A Uber spokesman said that the sentence “confirms that several contractual protections apply for people who book travel to London compared to the rest of England and Wales”, but has “no impact on the application of Uber VAT”.
The lawyer of Delta Taxis Layla Bard Jones, from Aaron & Partners, said that a victory for Uber would seriously hit many private rental operators, adding: “A crisis has been avoided”.
In a separate case, this year he defeated the bolt for the delivery of the lap and the delivery of Estonian food on what must charge VAT at 20%.
Since then HMRC has been granted permission to contest the sentence that Bolt is responsible only for VAT on its margin, rather than the entire cost of the journey, to the Court of Appeal.
Kimberly Hurd, senior general manager of Bolt for the United Kingdom, welcomed the decision of the Supreme Court on Uber’s appeal, but said that a new regulatory framework was necessary so that the rules were consistent throughout the United Kingdom.
