Under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), and their European equivalent, IFRS, a company generally cannot include in income payments it receives on behalf of others.<p>Lyft, and Uber, rely on the fiction that they are merely booking apps for drivers, so the fares belong to the driver, and Lyft and Uber are merely entitled to a portion of the fare for providing the booking service.  At no time are they&#x2F;were they entitled to the entire fare, so booking the entire fare as income flies in the face of good accounting--and, for publicly traded companies, the law.<p>The only reason startups do this is to artificially inflate their valuations. It&#x27;s really not much different from cooking the books.