Bill says Uber vehicles will have to carry logo and pay tax

Vehicles that provide Uber service in Panama will be obliged to place a painted logo on their doors, and  the hood to  “identify them definitively as a transport” of the company, says a draft presented by Deputy Cenobia Vargas, with the support of colleagues Aliana González, Petita Ayarza, and      Víctor Castillo, all of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) .

The bill also says that the Uber in Panama will have the obligation to pay a tax on the platform ” to avoid unfair competition, with respect to other types of transport”.

He also points out that the platform will only charge digitally, as it allows “the user a more effective, efficient, and modern system.” 

In the explanatory statement, deputy Vargas points out that it is “unfortunate that on many occasions the transports that have special regulations are rented to non-owners, and likewise are rented to foreigners without the government having control of these deformations, that carry, insecurity, risks, bad service without the authorities being able to  date to control “.

The proposal arises amid the uncertainty that Uber is going through. Last week the platform warned that if the Panamanian government maintains the ban on cash collection, it would lose half of its clients and jeopardize its investments in Panama.

“We have a lot of uncertainty about our investment and our future” in Panama, George Gordon, general manager of Uber for Latin America, told AFP.

On September 30, the extension given by the government for transport platforms to charge cash ends according to Uber, of the 280,000 users it has,  could not use the service because they do not pay by credit card.