The Uber Ruling Isn't About Rideshare. It's About Your Flow of Funds

On 4 November 2026, the High Court dismissed Uber's final appeal in a 6–1 decision. The money Uber passed on to its drivers is now confirmed as deemed wages under the NSW payroll tax contractor provisions. The bill is about $81 million for 2015 to 2020, and reporting suggests later years could take it well past $100 million.

Most of the commentary I've read treats this as a rideshare story, or a contractor-versus-employee story. It's neither, really. Uber never argued its drivers were employees, and the court didn't find that they were.

What the court looked at was simpler and, for anyone building a marketplace, a lot more uncomfortable: who the money flows through, who controls it, and what the contracts say the workers are actually doing.

I've spent the last few years building payment infrastructure for gig platforms and marketplaces. Before that I worked 19 different jobs, plenty of them paid through someone else's platform. So I've been on both sides of this flow of funds. This ruling is worth every marketplace founder's time, including (maybe especially) if you've never thought about payroll tax.

Why flow of funds sat at the centre of it

Uber's setup will look familiar to most marketplace operators. The rider pays Uber. Uber takes its service fee. Uber passes the rest to the driver. On paper, Uber described itself as the driver's limited payment collection agent, and argued it was simply providing an administrative payment arrangement.

The court didn't accept that. The majority pointed to the fact that Uber had structured its business so rider payments were funnelled through it, and that it controlled the financial transactions between riders and drivers. It also found that drivers supply a service to Uber, because their driving is what Uber needs to earn its fees and keep its business running.

The myth this kills

A lot of marketplaces have quietly relied on one sentence in their terms: "We collect payments as agent on behalf of our providers."

That wording still has a job. Acquirers and payment providers often want it, and it's part of how many marketplaces pass KYB. But this ruling makes it clear that it does not, by itself, protect you from payroll tax. The contractor provisions were written to look past the labels to what's really happening.

Put simply: the clause you wrote to keep your payment provider comfortable is not the clause that keeps you safe with the State Revenue Office. In some setups, the two actually pull in opposite directions.

What your flow of funds can and can't do

Let me be clear about this, because I've already seen some hot takes suggesting you can "restructure your payments" around the ruling. You can't re-route money and make payroll tax go away. The test turns on the substance of your contracts: are your workers supplying services to you, in the course of your business? Moving the money without changing that relationship is exactly what these provisions are designed to catch.

But flow of funds isn't irrelevant either. It's evidence. It tells a regulator, an auditor or a court who really controls the transaction. Broadly, marketplaces sit somewhere on this spectrum:

That last point matters. If you set the price, set the service standards and own the customer relationship, the worker-as-merchant model won't hold up just because the money moves differently. Your operations, contracts and payment flow need to tell the same story.

Two more things worth knowing: • It isn't just NSW. Payroll tax is a state tax, but the contractor provisions are broadly harmonised. Commentary has flagged the risk across every state and territory except WA. • It can look backwards. Payroll tax liabilities can reach back years. Uber's assessment covered six financial years. If your setup has drifted since launch, your exposure has been building quietly the whole time.

A 15-minute self-audit for marketplace founders

You don't need a law firm to start. You need an honest look at how your marketplace actually works today, not how it worked in your pitch deck. Grab your ops lead and your finance lead and run through these:

Your money flow

• Can you draw your flow of funds on one page, from customer payment to worker bank account?
• Does customer money land in your company's own account before it reaches workers?
• Who is the merchant of record on the customer's card statement
• Who carries refunds and chargebacks: you or the worker?

Your control

• Who sets the price: you, the worker, or both?
• Do you set service standards, ratings thresholds or how the work is done?
• Can workers serve customers outside your platform, and do they?

Your paper trail

• Do your worker terms, customer terms and payment provider setup all describe the same model?
• Could you produce, for any month in the last five years, who was paid, how much, and under which contract?
• Are super, GST and other obligations handled per payment, or reconciled by hand at the end of the month?

If you answered "the platform" to most of the control questions and "not sure" to most of the paper trail questions, that's your signal to get proper tax advice now, not after an assessment arrives.

And this isn't happening in isolation. Between the FWC's minimum standards for gig work, Payday Super, and now this ruling, Australian regulators are consistently looking at the substance of gig arrangements rather than the labels. Payments, compliance and contracts are no longer separate conversations.

Where we fit

I'll keep this short, because the point of this piece is the audit, not a pitch. At MyGigsters, we build the payment and financial infrastructure that sits between marketplaces and the people who work through them. We don't think any payment setup is a payroll tax shield, and we'd be wary of anyone who sells it as one.

What we can do is make sure your flow of funds tells the truth about your business, and that you can prove it:

• A flow of funds that matches your model. Whether you're the merchant of record or your workers are, money moves through licensed partners and settles into accounts held for each worker, rather than sitting in your operating account.

• A record for every payment. Each payout is tied to the worker, the job and the terms it was paid under, so the "show me the last five years" question has an answer.

• Compliance built into the payment. Super, GST and the other obligations are handled at the moment money moves, not reconciled at month end.

We work alongside your tax and legal advisers, not instead of them. They decide the right model for your marketplace; we make the money flow match it.

Benjemen Elengovan

CEO and founder, MyGigsters

Benjemen worked 19 different gigs before founding MyGigsters. He builds payment infrastructure for platforms with independent workers, from the problems he hit firsthand.