Integrity Briefing: Uber’s influence empire in New Zealand – A tax dodger’s political playbook

New Zealand prides itself on a fair go – but when it comes to Uber, the playing field is anything but fair. A new report by researcher Edward Miller of the Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research (CICTAR) lays bare how the ride-hailing giant has built its NZ business on avoiding taxes and accountability, all while cosying up to political power. Uber’s model hinges on two types of misclassification – of its workers and its revenue – and a concerted lobbying campaign that has infiltrated the highest levels of government.

The result is a company that rakes in hundreds of millions from Kiwis while paying peanuts in tax, and a government seemingly writing laws from Uber’s own playbook. This Integrity Briefing is an extended version – apologies for the length – but it’s time to expose how Uber games the system and bends our policymakers to its will.

The Uber Model: Misclassify everything, pay almost nothing

Uber’s success isn’t just about a nifty app – it’s about sidestepping the rules. Miller’s report, The Business of “Misclassification”: Costing the Uber Model in Aotearoa, shows Uber has turned misclassification into a business strategy. First, it misclassifies its drivers as “contractors” instead of employees, dodging the obligations most businesses have (holiday pay, minimum wage, KiwiSaver contributions, etc.).

Second, it misclassifies its own revenue, using an accounting sleight-of-hand that treats drivers (and restaurants, in Uber Eats) as if they were the ones providing the service. Uber essentially designates itself a middleman – portraying the drivers as independent businesses or even as customers of Uber’s platform. In Miller’s analysis, this “driver-as-consumer” fiction lets Uber “radically under-report its own revenue” in New Zealand. In plain language: Uber pretends much of the money changing hands isn’t really its income, so it only books a slim portion of each fare in its NZ accounts.

Why does this matter? Because counting less revenue in New Zealand means paying less tax in New Zealand. Uber takes a significant cut from every ride and delivery – but most of that cut never shows up on the books of Uber’s NZ subsidiaries. Instead, Uber offshores the profits via inter-company charges and royalty fees. Miller’s report reveals that in 2023 Uber’s estimated gross bookings in New Zealand (the total amount Kiwis paid for rides and Uber Eats orders) was around $867 million.

Yet Uber NZ reported only about $365 million of that as local revenue – barely 42%. The remaining 58% (roughly $500 million) is treated as if it belongs elsewhere. How? Uber’s web of subsidiaries skims off the top. For rideshare, a Dutch affiliate (Uber BV) receives the customer’s payment first, and after paying drivers, a hefty “service fee” is sent to another arm of Uber – ultimately landing in a tax haven. For Uber Eats, a similar structure applies. In total, about $200 million of NZ-sourced revenue in 2023 was siphoned to related companies overseas as “service fees”.

And what does Uber’s local ledger show after these shenanigans? Not much. Its main NZ operating companies (Rasier NZ for rides, Portier NZ for Eats) scrape by on thin profits – by design. In 2023, Rasier NZ recorded a pre-tax profit of only $2.2 million on $110 million of reported revenue – a profit margin of just 2%.

Combined with Portier, Uber’s total income tax expense in New Zealand was about $1.2 million. Yes, just over one million dollars in tax – from a service that Kiwi consumers poured nearly a billion dollars into. Miller estimates that if Uber weren’t offloading its earnings to low-tax havens, New Zealand would have collected an extra $56 million in income tax for 2023 alone. In other words, Uber’s tax avoidance schemes cost NZ tens of millions every year, depriving our hospitals, schools and infrastructure of funding.

How does Uber pull this off? A key element is shifting its intellectual property to Delaware, a US state famous for corporate secrecy and tax loopholes. Uber’s licensing fees and “tech support” charges – essentially the price Uber NZ pays to use the Uber app and brand – flow to a holding company in Delaware. (Uber recently moved its IP from the Netherlands to Delaware, where income from intangibles is tax-exempt.)

By routing fees for the app, trademarks, and algorithms to Delaware, Uber effectively books its NZ profit in a zero-tax jurisdiction. Miller’s research found that Uber’s NZ arms consistently have 99%+ gross profit margins (since drivers bear almost all costs), but then wipe out the vast majority of that profit through “inter-company” expenses, paying their own sister companies abroad. Those sister companies, like the one in Delaware, don’t pay tax on the income, and Uber’s global bottom line benefits while New Zealand’s tax base is eroded.

In sum, Uber’s recipe is clear: treat drivers as contractors so their labour doesn’t count as a company expense, and treat drivers’ fares as not fully Uber’s revenue so that most income doesn’t show up on the NZ books. It’s a double misclassification whammy. This scheme has allowed Uber to explode in size without bearing the normal costs a transport business would – costs that have simply been foisted onto workers and the public. As Miller’s report concludes, Uber’s model is essentially “the business of ‘misclassification’”.

But if Uber’s aggressive tax avoidance is the disease, our political system’s response has been a dreadful symptom. Rather than cracking down on this corporate shell game, New Zealand’s current government seems to be actively enabling it. The second half of this story – arguably the more disturbing part – is how Uber’s political influence machine has greased the wheels to protect its racket.

Lobbying blitz: Uber’s inside track in Wellington

Uber didn’t reinvent the wheel here either: it simply applied, in New Zealand, the same playbook it’s used globally – cultivating friends in high places and pushing its agenda through relentless lobbying. What’s striking is just how effective Uber has been at insinuating itself into our policymaking process. In the past two years, as legal challenges and regulatory debates heated up, Uber shifted into high gear to secure political protection for its business model.

The clearest example is playing out right now. After a landmark Court of Appeal ruling in March 2024 confirmed that Uber drivers are indeed employees (at least whenever they’re logged into the app), Uber faced a serious threat: its misclassification charade could crumble, forcing it to treat drivers as workers with rights.

Uber’s response? Bypass the courts and run to friendly politicians to change the law. It found willing allies in the incoming National/Act coalition government (elected late 2023), which was ideologically inclined to “flexibilise” labour laws in Uber’s favour.

Ministers on speed-dial: “Your Proposal, Minister?”

In May 2024 – barely half a year into the new government – Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden (Act Party) held a private meeting with Uber’s representatives. The topic: rewriting contractor legislation. Official documents obtained under the OIA (Official Information Act) show Uber came armed with a draft law change – literally its own proposed amendments to the Employment Relations Act. And shockingly, the Minister’s briefing notes explicitly referenced “your [Uber’s] proposal”. In other words, Uber was not just lobbying for a policy outcome – it had delivered the government a cut-and-paste template for new legislation.

A few key facts here deserve outrage:

• Uber initiated the meeting. Van Velden’s office admitted Uber reached out and secured the appointment. (Of course, many less-wealthy stakeholders struggle to get such access.)

• The meeting occurred while a major court case against Uber was ongoing (Uber was appealing the Employment Court’s finding that drivers are employees). The Minister insists the timing was coincidental, but it’s hard not to see this as Uber trying to short-circuit the judiciary by preemptively changing the law.

• Most importantly, the content of Uber’s proposal all but became government policy. The coalition agreement between National and Act, signed in late 2023, had already foreshadowed this – it included a pledge to “increase certainty in contracting” by blocking contractors from challenging their status in court. Uber’s fingerprints were all over that commitment, and Minister van Velden’s May meeting cemented it.

By September 2024, van Velden announced the specifics: a new “gateway test” in law to definitively classify workers as contractors if a few criteria are met (e.g. a written contract saying so, freedom to work for others, ability to refuse work, etc.). If those sound familiar, it’s because they mirror the exact points Uber proposed.

Documents seen by RNZ confirm that the “proposed amendments” Uber handed the Minister in May were strikingly similar to the criteria the government unveiled in the fall. In effect, Uber wrote its own regulatory get-out-of-jail card, and the government dutifully began to play it.

It didn’t go unnoticed. Political opponents and unions cried foul, accusing the government of “copy and pasting Uber’s position” into law. Green Party labour spokesperson Teanau Tuiono blasted that the coalition was “rolling out the red carpet for big business… deep in the pockets of Uber… basically copying someone else’s homework”. The NZ Council of Trade Unions likewise said it appeared the Minister “followed Uber’s instructions word for word”. These aren’t hyperboles – they’re accurate descriptions of what occurred. When a Cabinet Minister is literally using a foreign corporation’s cheat-sheet to alter New Zealand’s employment law, it is a brazen case of policy capture.

Minister van Velden, for her part, denied giving Uber special treatment – with a line that inadvertently confirmed Uber’s undue influence. “There’s no preferential treatment… a range of business groups and unions were consulted,” she said, “The proposal that we worked on has gone through analysis where Uber worked with Business New Zealand on a policy.” (Read that again: the Workplace Minister openly acknowledged that Uber and BusinessNZ (the country’s top business lobby) jointly crafted the policy her government was advancing.

She even attempted to claim the final result was an “amalgamation” of various inputs, not just Uber’s – but when pressed, could cite only one significant change (allowing for subcontracting) that unions wanted and wasn’t in Uber’s draft. The core of the law, by all other accounts, remained “virtually the same” as Uber’s proposal. As CTU President Richard Wagstaff put it, the small tweaks “don’t excuse the overall impression here that [the government] followed Uber’s instructions… It looks pretty clear that she does what Uber wants first and foremost.”

This level of cosiness – a minister championing a law that directly benefits one company in the midst of that company’s legal battle, seemingly using that company’s own draft – is almost beyond parody. It has been rightly described as the government “copying Uber’s homework”, and it exemplifies the revolving-door of ideas (if not personnel) that Uber exploits. Here we see ideological alignment turning into policy capture: a pro-deregulation minister, an Act Party eager to please business, and a National Party happy to neuter labour regulations, all aligning perfectly with Uber’s interests.

Proxy power: Uber’s friends in high places

How did Uber manage to so effectively “get its way”? Part of the answer is that it rarely lobbies alone. Uber has woven itself into the fabric of NZ’s business and policy circles, using proxy organizations and allies to amplify its voice. By doing so, Uber’s agenda is advanced not just by a single Silicon Valley company, but by a chorus of influential Kiwi institutions – some of which receive corporate funding or membership fees from Uber. Let’s map out this network of influence:

A) BusinessNZ – the Voice of Corporate NZ

Uber is a dues-paying member of BusinessNZ’s elite Major Companies Group, rubbing shoulders with the country’s top corporations. BusinessNZ’s lobbyists have been pushing Uber’s case as if it were the whole business community’s cause. In fact, Uber and BusinessNZ worked hand-in-glove on the contractor law changes – as van Velden herself admitted. By piggybacking on BusinessNZ’s clout, Uber made its one-company crusade look like a broader industry priority. BusinessNZ helped get the pro-Uber contractor policy into the National-Act coalition agreement (Act and BusinessNZ are closely aligned on labour issues). It’s a symbiotic relationship: Uber funds BusinessNZ through membership, and BusinessNZ delivers Uber’s wish-list to Ministers’ desks. The public, of course, is none the wiser that the “business community’s view” on gig work has been heavily scripted by Uber’s lobbyists.

B) The New Zealand Initiative – ideological cover from a think tank

The NZ Initiative is a prominent libertarian think tank advocating free-market policies. It doesn’t openly lobby for Uber per se, but it consistently echoes arguments that benefit Uber’s agenda. From publishing papers praising the flexibility of gig work to op-eds warning against “over-regulation,” the Initiative has provided a stream of intellectual ammunition for Uber.

Case in point: in September 2024, as the contractor law plans were announced, NZ Initiative chief economist Dr Oliver Hartwich lauded the move, calling it a “bold step” to provide certainty for gig businesses. Hartwich explicitly contrasted New Zealand’s approach with other countries, noting that Uber’s “whole business model hinges” on drivers being contractors – if forced to treat them as employees, “the company might just as well decide to stop operating.”

This remarkably candid statement (published in The Australian) basically admits Uber cannot function under normal labour laws – and celebrates NZ for bending to accommodate that. The NZ Initiative’s views aren’t surprising given its backers; it’s funded by many large corporates (including tech firms) and is part of a global Atlas Network of free-market think tanks. It preaches deregulation as gospel.

Conveniently, one of the Initiative’s alumni, Matt Burgess, moved from being its economist to become PM Chris Luxon’s economic adviser – literally taking that worldview into the Beehive. (Burgess isn’t the only one; the Initiative’s influence network extends into the government through multiple former staffers and allies.) With such figures whispering in the ears of Ministers, it’s no wonder Uber’s anti-regulatory mantra finds a warm reception.

C) NZ Taxpayers’ Union – populist anti-tax agitator

The Taxpayers’ Union is another lobby group (a self-styled citizens’ watchdog on government spending) that often aligns with Uber’s interests. While it focuses on tax and fiscal issues, it generally opposes new regulations and taxes on businesses. The Union has been quick to slam things like a potential “Uber tax.” For example, when the previous government floated extending GST to all Uber and Airbnb transactions (closing a loophole for small-scale providers), National’s Nicola Willis decried it as an “app tax” that would hurt consumers.

The Taxpayers’ Union amplified that message, campaigning against any such measure as bureaucratic money-grabbing. (In fact, that GST policy was implemented in 2024 to level the playing field – requiring Uber to collect GST on every ride, which it had long avoided. Uber publicly acquiesced, but behind the scenes certainly welcomed the new government’s promise to not go further with digital service taxes or other crackdowns.)

The Taxpayers’ Union, stacked with right-leaning political insiders, naturally sides with corporate positions against regulation and was delighted to see the National-led coalition scrap or water down many policies that irked businesses. While not directly funded by Uber (so far as anyone knows), the Union’s rhetoric (“don’t overtax or over-regulate digital services”) dovetails perfectly with Uber’s goals. It’s proxy advocacy – Uber gets the benefit without getting its hands dirty.

All the above proxies and partnerships have given Uber a megaphone far louder than its own corporate voice. When BusinessNZ hosts a closed-door forum on independent contracting, Uber’s interests are represented alongside dozens of major firms – lending Uber the credibility of an entire business sector. When think tank pundits write opinion pieces extolling the gig economy, Uber’s lobbyists can cite those in meetings: “Look, independent experts say our model is good for workers!” When politicians with ties to these groups speak up, it can blur whether they’re acting on party ideology or nudges from their industry mates.

The influence network is sprawling. Uber has even managed to ingratiate itself into government advisory circles without formal “revolving door” hires. Unlike some big corporates, Uber NZ didn’t hire ex-Ministers as lobbyists – but it didn’t need to. It cultivated relationships through proxies and by leveraging its status as a Silicon Valley innovator that governments were eager to engage with.

As one observer noted, Uber normalised itself within NZ’s political and business elite: it joined the chambers of commerce, sponsored tech events, and portrayed itself not as a rogue disruptor but as a valuable, innovative investor in New Zealand’s future. This soft power paid off. By the time labour issues came to a head, officials and Ministers already saw Uber as “one of the stakeholders” – not a pariah to be reined in, but a partner to consult.

Revolving doors, red carpets, and the cost of capture

What’s happening with Uber in New Zealand is a case study in corporate influence – one that should set off alarm bells. We have a multinational making huge profits from Kiwi consumers, avoiding its fair share of tax, and then manoeuvring through political channels to secure laws that entrench those advantages. There may not be a literal revolving door of officials going to work for Uber (at least not yet), but there’s a figurative revolving door of ideas and access.

Consider the cast of characters:

Brooke van Velden – the Act MP-turned-Minister who has essentially been Uber’s point person in government. Young and avowedly pro-market, she has been unusually receptive to Uber’s lobbying – to the point of publicly defending her decision to meet Uber amidst a court case. She parrots the mantra of “providing certainty for contractors,” yet what’s really being delivered is certainty for Uber that its workforce will remain cheap and rightless. Critics in Parliament have quipped that van Velden and her colleagues are “in Uber’s pocket”, acting as if they’re Uber’s political wing rather than neutral policymakers. It’s harsh rhetoric, but her actions (literally carrying Uber’s proposal into Cabinet) warrant it.

Nicola Willis – now Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance (National Party). While not directly tied to Uber, Willis exemplifies the broader business-friendly stance that aligns with Uber’s interests. As opposition finance spokesperson, she railed against the “app tax” that would make Uber rides include GST, positioning National as the defender of Uber/Airbnb customers from price hikes. True to form, the new government quickly halted any expansion of digital services taxes or stricter GST rules on platforms – a win for Uber’s bottom line. Willis moves in the same circles as BusinessNZ’s leadership and the Taxpayers’ Union alumni, and has signalled that under her watch New Zealand will be “open for business.” That likely means less scrutiny of profit-shifting by multinationals and more willingness to accommodate companies like Uber with tax or regulatory concessions. (One might recall it was a National Government in 2017 that legalised Uber’s operations in the first place, overriding taxi regulations to give ride-shares a free pass. Willis and her colleagues have shown little interest in revisiting Uber’s favourable treatment.)

Matt Burgess – mentioned earlier, Burgess is a behind-the-scenes player but an illustrative one. As a former NZ Initiative economist, he was a vociferous advocate for free-market solutions (be it in climate policy, housing, or labour). Now, as the Prime Minister’s economic adviser, he is in a position to reinforce Uber-friendly thinking at the highest level. His prior work no doubt involved networking with BusinessNZ and multinational companies (the Initiative’s membership includes Big Tech and gig economy firms). It’s no stretch to imagine Burgess and others in the PM’s office see the Uber issue through a sympathetic lens – viewing gig platforms as “innovation” to be nurtured, not as rule-breakers to be tamed. This is how institutional capture works: you don’t need a brown envelope of cash when you have key officials who already agree with your corporate worldview and will advance it earnestly.

The result of these revolving ideas and red-carpet treatments is that Uber has faced virtually no accountability for its practices in New Zealand. Unlike some countries where regulators or courts have put Uber on the back foot, here every serious attempt to hold Uber to account has been met with an even stronger counter-move by the company and its allies:

1. The Employment Court ruled in 2022 that a group of Uber drivers were employees – a potential game-changer. Uber appealed, dragging it out. When it lost in the Court of Appeal in 2024, Uber simply switched to lobbying mode and got the law rewritten to nullify the court victories.

2. Unions and worker advocates have struggled to get political traction. They’re outgunned by Uber’s sophisticated PR and lobbying. The government’s own consultations on contractor laws in 2023/24 gave Uber and business groups multiple seats at the table, while unions’ pleas fell on deaf ears.

3. On the tax front, Inland Revenue and past Ministers had begun tightening some rules (like the GST loophole closure). But more sweeping measures – a Digital Services Tax on big digital multinationals’ NZ revenues, or stronger enforcement of transfer pricing – were taken off the agenda, arguably to avoid upsetting tech investors. Miller’s report notes that New Zealand dropped the idea of a digital services tax after US pressure, leaving digital giants still largely “operating outside of the mainstream tax system” and incentivised to keep shifting profits. In short, no politician here has made an example of Uber. If anything, our leaders have bent over backwards to keep Uber “happy” – fearing that the company might otherwise scale back service or investment.

This should spark public outrage. Why is a foreign corporation allowed to dictate terms to New Zealand’s government? Every time Uber skirts a law or drafts a new one to its liking, it’s essentially thumbing its nose at the Kiwi public and our democratic process. There is a real cost to this cosy arrangement.

Cost #1: When Uber doesn’t pay its fair share, ordinary taxpayers have to fill the gap – or public services go underfunded. (Imagine what an extra $50+ million a year in tax revenue could do for public transport or healthcare.)

Cost #2: When Uber’s workers are denied basic rights, labour standards across the board are threatened. If one big employer can carve out a loophole to avoid sick leave, holiday pay, or ACC levies, how long before other industries demand the same “flexibility”? Weakening employee protections under the guise of “modernising” the law (as the current government is doing) could create a whole class of working poor with no safety net.

Cost #3: When policy is made in backrooms with corporate lobbyists, the public interest gets second billing. The Uber example reveals a lack of transparency – we only learned of Uber’s draft law because of leaked documents and OIA requests. What else gets offered up in private meetings? This erodes trust in government. Certainly the myth of New Zealand being a low-corruption country doesn’t fit with this kind of legal corruption – where influence is exerted not through bribes but through access, relationships, and the promise of investment.

Exposing Uber’s tactics – and taking back control

It’s time to call this what it is: regulatory capture. Uber has masterfully positioned itself so that regulators and politicians see the world “through Uber’s eyes”. The company has been treated as a stakeholder to accommodate, rather than a behemoth to hold accountable. And unless we shine a light on these tactics, Uber will keep running circles around our laws.

This Integrity Briefing, grounded in Edward Miller’s meticulous research and bolstered by investigative reporting, aims to spark a public reckoning. New Zealanders should be asking: Who really runs the show here?

When a minister essentially acts as Uber’s scribe, whose interests are being served? (Spoiler: not the drivers struggling to earn minimum wage, and not the public missing out on tax revenue.) When Uber can shift profits to Delaware with impunity, why are we letting them off the hook while local businesses pay full freight?

We need urgent action on multiple fronts:

Close the Tax Loopholes: The IRD and government should implement measures to tax multinationals on their actual economic activity here. If Australia can force companies to report their profits country-by-country and bring in a diverted profits tax, so can we. Requiring Uber to report its NZ revenues on a gross bookings basis (not the tiny “service fee” basis) would be a start – making the hidden billions visible. Then we can tax those profits that Uber is currently smuggling offshore. It’s simply about fairness: Uber shouldn’t get to play by different rules than a local taxi firm or restaurant.

Protect Worker Rights: Instead of carving out special laws to insulate Uber, Parliament should be doing the opposite – ensuring gig workers have basic protections. The proposed contractor “gateway test” tilts the playing field entirely in Uber’s favour and should be scrapped or rewritten to truly protect vulnerable workers, not corporate profits. New Zealand has a proud history of workplace fairness; creating a second-class status for Uber drivers betrays that legacy. If the Government won’t listen (given its love for Uber), then opposition parties, unions, and the public must ramp up the pressure. Court victories for workers should be celebrated, not circumvented.

Shine Light on Lobbying: We need far greater transparency about lobbying activities and potential conflicts of interest. The fact we only learned of Uber’s influence through leaked emails and after-the-fact admissions is not good enough. NZ should introduce a lobbying register and require timely disclosure of meetings between ministers and corporates lobbying on regulatory matters. Sunlight is the best disinfectant – if Uber’s proposals had been exposed to daylight in real time, it would have been harder for the government to justify copy-pasting them. Likewise, corporate donations and think-tank funding sources need scrutiny when those entities are steering policy debates.

Rebalance the Narrative: Uber and its proxies love to spin stories about “innovation”, “flexibility”, and “consumer choice”. It’s seductive messaging, but often misleading. We must remind decision-makers and the public that Uber’s convenience comes at a cost – a cost borne by drivers (low pay, no security) and by society (unpaid taxes, undermined labour standards). The public discourse should include the voices of drivers, gig workers, and independent experts – not just corporate PR. Once people see the full picture, the shine comes off Uber’s glossy image. As one union lawyer aptly put it, Uber’s relationship with its drivers is “shambolic… [with a] power imbalance” , and no amount of tech-utopian talk should distract from that reality.

New Zealanders have a choice: Do we want our policies to be made in California boardrooms or in New Zealand communities? The Uber saga is a wake-up call. It’s not just about one company; it’s about whether we let corporate giants play us for fools. Uber’s strategy is clear – influence through infiltration, lobbying through front groups, and avoidance of responsibility at every turn. Now that we see it, we can’t un-see it. The task ahead is to reclaim our regulatory sovereignty: close the loopholes, slam shut the revolving door, and demand that companies like Uber play by our rules – not write the rules themselves.

Uber’s political influence operation in this country may be slick, but it’s not invincible. With public pressure and fearless journalism, we can throw open the books on Uber’s dealings and ensure our leaders put people over platform profiteers. This Integrity Briefing is therefore a rallying cry: Let’s hold Uber to account and safeguard the integrity of our democracy and economy. New Zealand should not be a pushover playground for Uber – it should be a place where transparency, fairness, and the public interest come first. If we can stand up to the Ubers of the world, we send a powerful message: no company is above the law, and no lobbyist’s whisper is louder than the voice of the New Zealand public.

Dr Bryce Edwards

Director of The Integrity Institute

Further reading:

Edward Miller: The Business of “Misclassification”: Costing the Uber Model in Aotearoa

1News: Uber accused of not paying its fair share of taxes in NZ