The Australian Taxation Office has contacted 60,000 Uber drivers to warn them that they have not registered for GST or properly declared their income. This constitutes about a third of all people who have received income from ride-sharing services since 2015.
All Uber drivers need to be registered for GST, and have been ever since an ATO ruling back in August 2015.
“We are seeing numbers of drivers growing, but there’s quite a significant churn rate,” Assistant Commissioner Tom Wheeler told Fairfax. “Our monitoring tells us that only half of these 60,000 drivers received a payment for driving in the recent January to March 2017 quarter.”
“The ATO has more work to do in educating drivers about their tax obligations and making sure they comply.”
As more and more people use ride-sharing services as either a primary or supplementary income, there are inevitably people who don’t know what their tax obligations are as a sole trader. Uber in the past tried to challenge the ATO’s ruling by suggesting that their cars weren’t actually like taxis at all.
The Federal Court didn’t agree with Uber, and upheld the ATO’s decision. So there’s something for you if you’re an Uber driver who hasn’t properly set up their ABN to receive GST – get right on that to avoid a world of pain later down the track.
Source: ATO.
Photo: Getty Images.
