In my earlier post about why you should be an UberX driver, the main benefit is that is can help subsidise your cost of car ownership. In fact, in terms of earnings vs a taxi, it might actually be similar on an hourly rate. For me, my experience with signing up with Uber was fairly simple. However, there was just a lot of administrative inefficiencies. Before beginning, you need to decide if you are looking to buy a car, use an existing car, or rent a car. For the steps below, I would be documenting for people who are looking to buy a car or to use their existing car. The very first step is to register a business or company. In Singapore, this is basically a hassle free step that you can even do online. Make sure to include business activity code 49219 into your business. The next step is to obtain a commercial insurance. The most common myth is that commercial limousine insurance is a lot higher than your regular insurance. However, that’s not the case. My car before doing uber, was quoted at $1650 annual premium ($800 excess, no windscreen excess). When I got my insurance for commercial limousine usage, it was only $1499 (however, it was $2000 excess and $100 windscreen excess). All numbers are not including NCD. If you have no accidents or issues, I believe NCD can be transferred to a sole proprietor’s vehicle, but not a pte ltd. After you have gotten your insurance, make sure you call in to cancel your previous insurance. The next step would be to go to LTA. If your car is currently under your personal name, you need to pay a $11 to do a transfer to your business or company. If there is an existing loan, you would also need to contact your bank to refinance the loan under your company. If you are buying a new car, just buy the car directly under your company. Chances are, if you...
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Singapore has one of the highest cost of car ownership in the world. Yet in per capita terms, we also have one of the most dense car population. So what gives? Most of the time, it is really about convenience and a form of luxury spending. But what if you could subsidise your cost of car ownership? Uber has been in Singapore for quite a while now. For those who are unfamiliar, it is a mobile app based limousine service, where you can essentially book a car to ferry you to your destination. No messy call bookings, and since payment is handled by credit card, there’s also no messy payment transactions. As a passenger, I have used uber almost 30 times. They have the UberExec service, which is essentially a high end luxury vehicle which uses cars such as Mercedes S class, E class, and similar. There’s a minium fare of $40 in this case. Then there’s the UberX service, which is a common sedan, such as Toyota Vios or similar. For UberX, there is a minimum fare of $8 in Singapore. There’s also the UberTaxi and SuperCar, which I shall not elaborate here. In terms of fares, UberX is actually fairly similar to that of a taxi, minus the confusing surcharges that cabs have. UberX uses a base fare plus time charge plus distance charge. During driver shortage periods or passenger excess periods, they may have a surge pricing, which can range from 1.1x. to 3x. This basically means the fare is multiplied accordingly. Quite a smart concept I would say. So why be a UberX driver? As a driver, you would need to register your car under a business or company. So straight up, this means your car can be expensed against any business revenue you might have. Uber basically takes 20% of any fare that you collect using their app. There’s no monthly charges or anything. So what this means is that it allows a person to register themselves as a...
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Some of you may know, I work in the financial industry, and I usually write emails to some people for their reading entertainment. Here’s one that I wrote a while back, on my outlook of 2012. Originally sent out 26 December 2011. One of the things I wanted to do for this email was to amalgamate some of the views I have as well as others that I have discussed with. In a way, a snippet of things that happened this year, and what it means for the year ahead. That is, the outlook for 2012. 2011, the watershed year 2011 has definitely been a watershed year in more ways than one. We have the General Elections, we have Orchard Road floodings, we have MRTs breaking down dramatically, we have numerous dead bodies found in reservoirs, we have a new record price for properties, we have our 2 Integrated Resorts, numerous new shopping malls and numerous new office buildings in the CBD. We also have Lee Kuan Yew leaving active politics. In a way, 2011 is really extraordinary. How can so many things happen in the same year? Suay? Heng? Or is the world really ending in 2012? Complacency is a downfall of the Singapore model? Some of the viewpoints I have been hearing about is if the Singapore model is good to go for the next decade? In the last 10 years, the biggest issue in Singapore was.. no issue. We have taken a lot of things for granted. Things were meant to work. Jobs will be available as long as you studied to the best of your ability. We will always have housing, we will always have cheap transport, we will have accessibility to anything you want to buy. This has also affected the policy makers. Why fix things if there is nothing broken? Thus, I would say the last 5 years has been one of complacency. There has been some lack of foresight and planning. After all, you pay senior management primarily...
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