As you say, investing in the stock market is a risk— you could lose everything. Presumably when making that investment (taking that risk), an investor compares the expected return to the risk he or she is taking. If the reward > risk, he or she invests. Imagine then, that the return for that risk was decreased.…

And lower costs. The point has been addressed above, so I really shouldn’t have to explain it, but even if an 8-10% (reasonable sales tax range for where I live in the US) increase in cost to the consumer significantly lowered the demand for rides, the reduced number of rides would actually lead to increased…

Your second sentence hints at what’s going on here. Uber’s profitability problems are not due to overhead costs, they are due to the variable costs. Higher cost to consumer leads to less rides, leads to lower variable cost (which exceeds their revenue per each transaction, which is why they have been subsidizing with…

To be honest, when I said “generally” I was not thinking Canada specifically.

Possibly. Have you done a price/demand elasticity study on uber rides?

You should clarify further— as you say, sales taxes are collected from the customer, not paid by the business. They are just a flow-through, so no, they would not impact profitability of uber. Also, generally speaking, sales taxes don’t apply to services.