Their headquarter has informed us that some representative from their Netherlands office will meet us. We will issue them a demand notice after getting their response because we are not sure who is liable to pay the tax - Uber or the cabbies. But someone has to pay
After allegedly falling foul with RBI, the US-based transport app provider Uber Inc, which offers its services to around 1,200 cab operators in India’s 10 top cities, has come under the scanner of the Services Tax Department.
“We have sent a tax enquiry to Uber Inc. So far, they have not paid us a single penny in taxes. We have not sent them a demand notice as they don’t have an office in the country, but are operating through their Netherlands arm,” Mumbai Service Tax Commissioner SK Solanki told the news agency.
When asked what is the quantum of the money they are in default of, Solanki said: “The department has not sent a demand notice to them but an enquiry, seeking clarifications.
“Their headquarter has informed us that some representative from their Netherlands office will meet us. We will issue them a demand notice after getting their response because we are not sure who is liable to pay the tax - Uber or the cabbies. But someone has to pay,” he said.
Uber has become popular by offering luxury car rides for a little more than the regular fare. The service tax notice to Uber makes it the first such demand to a foreign service provider in the e-commerce space in the country.
The San Francisco-based Uber Inc claims to be the world’s largest transport app service provider by online aggregation of luxury cab operators, and has been under legal and regulatory lens in almost all the markets it operates in like the home market US, Germany, Britain, Poland, Brazil, Korea, among others. It is present in over 200 cities globally.
In August this year, the Reserve Bank had reportedly asked it to stop receiving payments with single-factor authentication from October 31, which would effectively mean that it will have to shut shop by the end of the month here.