> But why were they "already contractors"? Doesn't that beg the question?[1]
No it doesn't. The point is that Hailo was an additional supplier of leads to people who operated businesses independently of Hailo, and that in itself strengthened the claim that they were genuinely independent businesses substantially. These companies didn't "spring into existence" when a driver decided to sign up with Hailo exclusively to deal with Hailo, and pretty much nobody would work only for Hailo. While not everyone only works for Uber, a lot do.
If that was the only difference between the two, Uber would probably have been ok, but in Uber's case there are many additional factors.
> Take a look at section 2.1 of the link I cited. Just based on the text alone, it's not obvious why that "self-employed" criteria doesn't apply to Uber.
HMRC does not define or have any legal powers to define whether or not you are self-employed (the furthest their powers go is to determine if your relationship is one that can be deemed employment for tax purposes, but that does not say anything about whether it is employment for other purposes).
They define how to interpret the tax rules. In this case specifically VAT rules. The only point that section make is that if you are operating it as self employed then VAT is ultimately your responsibility (though you may contract it away). In this case the tribunal found that Uber drivers are not, and so this section does not apply.
> Yes, the courts are free to interpret beyond the literal text but there doesn't seem to be objective consistency to it. The traditional UK taxi companies and the other ride sharing apps all seem to be misclassifying workers.
Read the actual judgement. The list of restrictions placed on drivers by Uber is very extensive. If any other minicab companies (and I don't know why we try to invent a different name for what Uber does - in UK parlance they are nothing but another minicab company; we have many of them, most of them with apps) place the same extensive restrictions on drivers, then I agree they too should be considered to be employers.
> I'm not familiar with Hailo. Are you saying that a person who didn't drive a taxi before can't sign up on the Hailo platform and immediately offer their services? Did they have to be associated with a traditional taxi company first as prerequisite?
A person needed to operate a licensed taxi, which passengers can hail (hence the name), as opposed to a minicab (which can only take bookings), which means they'd need to have been licensed by the appropriate authority (the Public Carriage Office in the case of London) as a taxi and have the appropriate training etc. Given the cost of taking the appropriate training and the cost of the car required etc., pretty much no drivers would do that to work exclusively for Hailo - the major benefit of being a licensed taxi is the ability to pick up passengers directly.
If Hailo signed up such drivers and placed them under the same restrictions as Uber and most of those drivers never operated independently to any extent, then Hailo would probably have gotten in trouble too, but there are many other differences as well.