The echo of the French UBER-fires got to the Russian Internet taxi services

On Friday, the American company Uber was forced to announce the suspension of a mobile application for searching, calling and paying for cheap taxis or private UberPOP drivers in France against the backdrop of confrontation with traditional taxi drivers. The news of the strike of French taxi drivers, demanding a ban on the activities of Ubera in the country and for greater clarity, reinforcing their wishes by beating drivers and burning their cars, did not bypass the Habr site. Moreover, the author of the article expressed a bold idea that the Russian Internet services, among which one can highlight such as Yandex Taxi, RBTaxi and Intertos Taxi, do not threaten anything like that. After all, they take into their ranks only drivers who have licenses.
However, successes in the struggle of our “European partners” against Uber inspired the owners of traditional Russian taxi services. The result - in the Capital of Revolutions, St. Petersburg, the next prohibitive initiative for our State Duma is born. Let's try to figure out what it is, what it is based on and how serious the threat poses to a quickly gaining popularity of a convenient and cheap Internet service.

Information for reference:

According to the St. Petersburgh Transport Committee of the City, as of June 1, 2015, permits for the transportation of taxi passengers have more than 5,500 individual entrepreneurs and 400 legal entities, in total, there are 33,000 vehicles. Today, about 20–30% of orders go through the services of IT companies, and this percentage is steadily increasing.

You are guilty because I want to eat

The Petersburg Taxi, a non-profit partnership, published on its website an open letter to the governor of St. Petersburg Georgy Poltavchenko. It is signed by partnership director Alexander Kholodov. The association includes the largest carriers of the city - “Taxi 6000000”, “Taxi 068”, “Taxi 063”, “7000000”, etc.
Taxi drivers complain that the triple tariffs - Uber, GetTaxi (now called Gett) and Yandex.Taxi - are comparable to the price of a trip by public transport (49-50 rubles), this violates the competition law, they say. The reason to blame the services for violating the antimonopoly legislation was that, for the convenience of the passengers, they subsidize “short” trips for small amounts. It is very convenient to ride in the morning in inclement weather a couple of bus stops to the subway for only 50 rubles. I do not know how in St. Petersburg, but in Moscow before the advent of these services, the price tag began with three hundred rubles. At the same time, Yandex does not work at a loss, it simply increases the percentage of deductions in its favor due to traveling long distances. Interestingly, such cross-subsidy systems are widespread in Russia. The best example is subsidizing the price of “socially significant goods” in retail chains. However, for some reason they are not filed with the prosecutor’s office and are not accused of violating antitrust laws.
Uber, Gett and Yandex.Taxi pay taxes only on interest earned, not on the amount of the order, claims Petersburg Taxi. The most terrible accusation is that foreign companies earn income that do not pay taxes in Russia in general, and in St. Petersburg in particular.
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The silence of the lambs

Services themselves reject accusations of taxi drivers. Yandex.Taxi reports that in St. Petersburg it does not take a commission from taxis and compensates drivers for part of the cost of only the shortest trips. Such a system allows drivers to earn and is very convenient for passengers, said a company representative. Michael Fisher. The head of Uber in St. Petersburg, argues that the company works only with legal entities and individual entrepreneurs (PI). According to him, in France and other countries, the authorities' claims were caused by the UberPOP service, where individuals could be drivers without a license. In Russia, this service does not work.
“Gettaksi Rus” is an independent legal entity, not a branch or representative office of a foreign company and pays taxes in Russia, says Gett CEO in Russia, Vitaly Krylov. According to him, the company works only with licensed carriers.

Who are the judges?

Questions of taxi drivers to the governor should be redirected to federal officials, according to Andrei Kibitov, representative of Poltavchenko. According to him, the governor has no authority to regulate the Internet and Internet commerce. The committee on transport does not have such powers, said a representative of the committee.
Regulation of Internet services for private transport is a matter of a legal nature, respectively, it is necessary to apply to the legislative branch of government.
Claims of a non-profit partnership to the activities of Uber, Gett and Yandex.Taxi boil down to a violation of tax and anti-monopoly laws, they should be checked by the police and the anti-monopoly service, and not by the governor, lawyers say.

Do Yandex roll in asphalt?

However, it is not at all possible that officials may take “a certain political decision influenced by the lobby or local protests of classic taxi services who do not want to reduce their profits in competition with the services of the new generation ordered by a taxi. The crusade of traditional taxi services resembles the senseless struggle of the Luddites. It is impossible to stop progress, the struggle against new technologies, which allow to save resources and make our life more comfortable, is doomed to failure.
When I watch for attempts to cling to the elusive past, I see pictures of a possible near future - mass protests of office building owners against the spread of remote work and their demands to legally prohibit work at home and in cafes, motivated by references to the inability to control working conditions. Do you think fiction?

PS Today received comments from FAS.

The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) does not see violations of the law in the activities of Internet applications for calling Uber, GetTaxi and Yandex.Taxi taxi services, said Andrei Tsarikovsky, deputy head of the department. “I do not see a violation of antitrust laws. It is impossible to argue with advantage.

Mind prevailed? Something tells me that this is only the first round.