Uber not taxi service, says manager

Budapest, February 18 (MTI) – Uber is not a taxi service but an IT company that operates an online marketplace for passenger transport and car sharing, the company’s operations manager in Hungary said on Thursday.

All payments are made electronically and transparently, Zoltán Fekete told a press conference. The central system generates an electronic invoice for every journey and all Uber drivers must have a business tax number. Further, every journey is insured up to 1.5 billion forints (EUR 4.8m), he added.

Uber based its electronic invoice on tax office (NAV) requirements, he said. Changes will be made by early March to comply with NAV’s insistence that passenger addresses should be shown, he added.

No details of registered Uber drivers have been requested by any authority in Hungary, Fekete said in response to a question.

A total of 1,200 Uber drivers work in Budapest, and this could grow to 2,000 by the end of the year, he said. All drivers hold the necessary licences for passenger transport or the acquisition of the licence is under way. When a driver registers in the Uber system, he or she must possess a certificate of good standing and no criminal record, plus a document showing that the driver caused no accident in the past three years.