That's not the definition the IRS uses. If DD called it a "fee", they would have to count it as corporate income and tax it before paying it out to the driver.

Whatever you "tip", passes through DD untaxed. It never shows up on DD's books; it goes straight to the driver's income.

From the driver's perspective, we have to maintain more than 70% Acceptance Rate to remain in the highest tier. If we fall into the lowest tier with a 50% Acceptance Rate, virtually all orders we see are untipped and long distance. In my area, we call it "eating shit" when we have to accept loss-generating orders just to maintain ratings.

What really pisses me off is that an untipped order gets offered to every driver in the area. I need to accept 4 orders to maintain my rating after refusing 1 untipped order. There's 10-30 drivers active in my area at any one time. A single untipped order anywhere in the area fucks up the ratings of every driver active during that time, and 10-30 drivers need a total of 40-120 orders to unfuck the damage caused by that one non-tipping asshole.

Uber is worse: I often see the same shitty order get passed around to every driver multiple times, fucking up my rating with them every time it comes around.