Guide for Uber drivers in Hawaii

The Hawaii GET rate for Uber drivers: 0.5% and 4.5%

An Uber driver pays General Excise Tax at two rates: 0.5% on fares and 4.5% on tips. Here’s where each comes from, what it means for your bill, and what can cost you the lower rate.

Fares: 0.5%

Tax Information Release 2025-01, published July 30, 2025, sets out how rideshare is taxed. Uber is a “marketplace facilitator”: it pays GET at 4% plus the county surcharge on what riders pay, apart from the tips it passes on to you. You are a “marketplace seller”, and pay GET on your gross income from rides at the wholesale rate of 0.5%. The county surcharge doesn’t apply at the 0.5% rate.

That’s two sales, each taxed once: the Department’s Tax Facts 37-1 explains why a wholesale sale and the retail sale that follows aren’t double taxation.

Tips: 4.5%

A discretionary tip is taxed at 4% plus the county surcharge, 4.5% in every county today. The release counts a tip as discretionary when the rider chooses to give it: a tip line in the app, or cash handed to you on top of the fare. So cash tips are taxed like tips in the app, and they count even though they’re on no Uber document.

A mandatory tip, such as an automatic gratuity, is part of the fare instead: any share of it paid to you is taxed at 0.5%.

Bonuses

The release doesn’t mention bonuses or promotions. The Department of Taxation told GETdone by phone on October 1, 2026, that they’re taxed at 4% plus the county surcharge, on the same line as tips (line 12, Commissions), and that this treatment also applies to periods before the release. GETdone follows that, and the summary it prints for your tax professional shows what everything at 4.5% would cost, so you can see the difference.

The county surcharge

Each county adds 0.5% to income taxed at 4%, on its own line of the return. It started on different dates: Oahu in 2007, Kauai in 2019, Hawaii County at 0.25% in 2019 and 0.5% from 2020, and Maui County in 2024. Before those dates there was none.

An example

$1,000 of fares and $100 of tips: the fares owe $5.00 (0.5%) and the tips $4.50 (4.5%), so $9.50 of GET on $1,100, a little under 0.9%. The more of your pay is tips and bonuses, the higher your overall rate. GETdone shows your own as a share of each deposit to set aside.

What can cost you the 0.5% rate

• No GE license. The form instructions say that if you need a license and don’t get one, you may be denied lower rates. How to get one.
• A late annual return. Filing the G-49 more than 12 months after its due date can cost the same. More on the G-49.

Without the 0.5% rate, fares would be taxed at 4.5% too: nine times as much on that part of your income.

Sources

Read on October 6, 2026. The Department’s pages are the final word: check them, and your tax professional, before you file.

• Tax Information Release 2025-01: GET obligations of rideshare companies and drivers (July 30, 2025)
• County Surcharge on General Excise and Use Tax (Department of Taxation)
• Tax Facts 37-1, General Excise Tax (revised May 2025)
• Instructions for Forms G-45 and G-49 (REV. 2025)

This guide explains the Department’s rules in plain words. It isn’t tax or legal advice.