Alaska Cruise Season Potentially Restarting Sometime July This Year & Uber Hiding Billions In Overseas Profits Held In Dutch Shell Companies

Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski at Work

Did you know that foreign-flagged ships cannot sail directly between two United States ports?   Well neither did I, explaining the mystery why cruise ships plying between Seattle and Alaska made stopovers in Canada upon their voyages north and south.  The reason this is immediately important is Canada's COVID-19 cruise ship ban, extending into early 2022, essentially killed the 2021 Alaska cruise ship season until now, meaning a new US Senate bill sponsored by Murkowski will pause this arcane requirement, allowing the tourist-laden ships to navigate Puget Sound and Pacific coastal inland waters.  The bill, passing Thursday, is now heading to the House of Representatives, and after passage, to Biden's awaited signature.   Who knows, maybe soon the law will change permanently, and ships registered in Panama, Holland, Bermuda and the Bahamas will proceed forward minus the bureaucratic piracy commandeered by the United States. 

And why is this important to Seattle's taxi industry?  The nearly one billion dollars the cruise industry brings to Seattle's collective economy, filling our cabs with tourists, tourists and more tourists. Who doesn't like easy money?  Us cabbies certainly do, which is why we should salute the senior senator from Alaska for doing what is sensible, allowing the cruise season to begin.  Thank you, Senator Murkowski, thank you very much. 

And always, despite what the CDC has said, wear your masks.

Not So Very Nice Uber

The Business Insider headline this week read, in an article written by Tyler Sonnemaker:

"'Champions League of avoidance,' Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes on nearly $6 billion in revenue, report says."

The article reports that in 2019, Uber claimed, for tax purposes, $4.5 billion in overseas operating losses.  The reality is quite different, as that same year it had an foreign operating revenue of $5.8 billion.  As many past  reports concerning Uber behavior have made clear, lying just comes natural to Uber, honesty happening only when appearing before some kind of US Congressional committee.

In a 2015 Fortune Magazine, written by Brian O'Keefe and Marty Jones, it's described how, in May 2015, six years ago, Uber created something called Uber International C.V., using that financial entity as a means of shifting ownership of several of its foreign subsidiaries, thus shielding all of its "outside of the United States" income from US tax collectors.   What the Fortune article tells us is that Uber's tax evasion maneuvering have been well known for a long period, Uber allowed to gobble away all that money like a big, green money-making crocodile hungry for more, more, more.  

Not nice but Uber has never been nice.  Before the then Sally Clark-led Seattle City Council capitulated to Uber, Uber had been operating in Seattle illegally for over a year, Uber thumbing its dirty, snotty nose at every regulator in sight.  That Uber continues to say "screw you" should not be surprising, Uber being what it is, not very nice.