Thread by @JolyonMaugham

I know lots of Londoners have adopted @Kapten as the ethical, tax-paying alternative to @Uber. But it isn't. THREAD.

Here's @Kapten's advertising and how it has been reported in the press. The actual truth is that, with one probably immaterial difference, it uses the same wheeze as @Uber. /1

The terms and conditions of @Kapten make clear that it only supplies - and for free - a Booking Service and use of the App. The Transportation Services are - or at least are said to be - provided by the Driver.

This matters because if (as @Kapten claims) the "Transportation Services" (the taxi ride to you and me. Well, you anyway) are supplied by the driver they only attract VAT if the driver earns more than £85,000 per annum. And s/he won't.

The Ts and Cs of @Kapten are written as if to suggest that the fare you pay "includes VAT". But this should be read as including ANY VAT. And there isn't any.

It's the fiscal equivalent for the ethical consumer of your mum stroking your head and telling you it will all be fine.

This is just like @Uber's terms and conditions are said to work. ("said to" because as I explained yesterday I believe we will shortly learn that they don't work. And nor should @Kapten's.

The "probably immaterial difference"? By some piece of jiggery-pokery @Uber takes its booking commission (and so pays any VAT on it) in the Netherlands whereas, we are invited to believe, @Kapten takes it and pays it in the UK.

(Indeed, if you read @Kapten's marketing materials really carefully they suggest this is the notional difference between bad @Uber and good @Kapten.) But it's not clear to me whether a hugely loss making business like @Kapten will pay any VAT on its commission.

Anyway. Got that off my chest. As you were. Tomorrow, perhaps, @AddisonLeeCabs.