Companies using different legal entities for risk or tax purposes is common in any area of business with lots of tangible assets. Whatever the Hertz holding company is, it controls everything. There's no meaningful comparison to a startup with random people owning title to cars.
Same thing when you walk into a CVS. "CVS Elm Street, LLC" isn't meaningfully distinguishable from CVS/Caremark, the parent.
They do this for liability purposes, not for tax purposes so it is exactly the same. The goal is to separate the revenue obtained from renting cars from the cars that are being rented so in event of a lawsuit the biggest assets (cars) are protected.
> Same thing when you walk into a CVS. "CVS Elm Street, LLC" isn't meaningfully distinguishable from CVS/Caremark, the parent.
Very very very different. What you are describing here is done for the tax purposes to segregate revenues subjected to different tax rules to guarantee that BlahTown which has one CVS in it and one CVS right outside of it cannot claim CVS needs to pay 1% on the sales done from a CVS outside of BlahTown.
Hertz actually owns its cars, at least at its Hertz-owned facilities. http://ir.hertz.com/2014-11-14-Hertz-Announces-New-U-S-Renta...