Like I said, I don’t have any easy solutions. If cab drivers could get day jobs and move to Uber like the rest of us. their problems will be largely solved. Problem is, may of them aren’t qualified for other day jobs and able to drive just to pick up some extra cash. And in another 10 or 20 or 30 years, we will be following them, because the cars will drive themselves.
I’m not convinced of the accpeted future of driverless cars, at least not in a 20-30 year time frame but then I might just be a Luddite. They will move on and find other things to do, no different than other mature industries.
Great thread. I’ve been thinking about doing this for a couple of hours a week just for shits and giggles.
If you go ahead and do it, PM me for my referral code. If you stick it out long enough to do 20 drives, they’ll pay me 200 bucks for referring you.
Also, I recommend it. So far at least I haven’t had any problems whatsoever with passengers, excepts smells – cigs (though no one smokes in the car) and food (packaged meals).
AFAIK, the only rule about your work time commitment is that you have to accept at least one passenger per month to stay active.
I probably won’t; it sounds like too much hassle for what would basically be a very weird hobby. I’ll definitely let you know, though.
Also, this seems like a good time to drop this: Humanity Photos, Memes & Videos - theCHIVE
It was something of a hassle to get started doing it. The only actual expense was getting a holder for my smart phone so I could use it without much handling. That was 20 bucks.
It is also a hassle now as I consider changing my car insurer to one that will offer me better coverage while Ubering. Based on my income so far, I expect to make somewhere from $15-20 thousand a year at it, while keeping my day job. Well, less gas and other expenses that haven’t come up yet. For instance, when I change insurers and add ridesharing coverage, my insurance will go up about $250 per year.
Another insurance update:
I informed my State Farm agent that I would be switching insurance soon to another company that would offer me coverage in the the insurance “gap” I mentioned in post #64. I also told him that I saw a news story that SF was now actually offering that coverage, but in CO and not in WI, and asked if there were plans to offer it here anytime soon.
I got an answer today that State Farm will begin offering rideshare coverage on April 15, and that my driving record was such (no claims in 20+ years) that there would be no additional charge for the coverage. So I’m gonna be real careful for the next month and stick with my State Farm policy.
Sounds like slowly but surely the rest of the governments and industries impacted by paid ridesharing are reacting to the new reality. Now all we need to do is get the taxi companies & medallion systems to react.
Sadly this will turn into a tragedy of the commons where too many drivers will chase too few fares and income will collapse to where cabbies are now.
That’s probably true, and even now the hourly average isn’t very good.
Oh, and besides gas, I am starting to see some more expenses. I’m using my phone and data a lot more, and then there’s car washes. There’s a local place that offers unlimited washes at 29.99 a month that I’m going to buy into. There’s a pricier option two with various and sundry protective coatings and wheel polishing at 39.99 and I’ll give that some thought. My car is still brand new, and I’m still vulnerable to upselling. 
Just wanna pop in and say that my aforementioned cousin is still driving here in Cleveland. I don’t know the nitty-gritty that Boyo Jim is able to share (hours, costs, income, etc) but if anything else he just plain enjoys the experience. He picked up a Cavaliers player the other day!
I enjoy it too. Once in a while someone pushes pretty hard on my annoyance button, but nothing I can’t handle. I am a little tired of college girls doing valley-girl-speak and college boys trying desperately to sound like hipsters, but I can find amusement in it.
I never drove for Lyft/Uber, but when I lived in snow country I always bought an unlimited washes for $30ish package. Getting all the snow & deice crap off the car once a week without fail definitely improves its long term condition.
Ok, now I’m going to find out what Uber does for my damaged car. I suspect, nothing in this case. I found a couple scratches and a paint chip knocked off the top of my back bumper. It’d not serious, but they’re the very first marks on my very noe car. I’m certain it was done by one or more passengers loading luggage in or out the trunk. The main problem is, I don’t know which one(s). Just today 3 different passengers used my trunk, and I typically pop the trunk from the dashboard release and don’t even get out the car.
Ok, lesson learned – that’s gotta change.
More Uber adventures, or lack thereof.
- Right now my local Verizon data network is crashed, so no Ubering until it’s up again. Not oddly, I suppose, but uselessly, the app works perfectly when in range of my home wifi, and stops about 20 feet from my parking space.
I’ve had my two most problematic rides to date in the past 24 hours.
The first was 2 am Saturday – a young woman who had just left a bar. I should have realized there was a problem when I arrived and she called me to say she couldn’t see me – it turned out she was less than 20 feet away and didn’t think to turn around to look. After she got in she was clearly of … diminished capacity. She wanted to know whether I wanted to get food with her. I told her I was fine to go somewhere she could get food, I wasn’t particularly hungry, and she was upset about that. Then she wanted dating advice (especially ironic to anyone who’s reading any of my dating threads), and then she began to lapse into incoherency. She either wouldn’t or couldn’t give me her home address. She gave me random directions. At one point she insisted that I go straight, which would have had me bumping over a curb and driving into a park. We drove around the Capital Square like 4 times. If I had seen a cop I would have flagged one down and asked for advice. Had she become completely unresponsive I would have driven her straight to an emergency room. Finally I just stopped the car and started talking to her, asking her if she wanted to call a friend, go get food, or what? Ultimately she gave me her home address – at least we ended up in front of a big apartment building so I hope it was her home address. She didn’t seem physically unsteady (which surprised me) when she got out of the car and insisted she could get into her place without help – so I left. That was it. She was in my car for nearly an hour, though we ended up in a location about 5 minutes away from the starting point.
The second problem was a bit scarier, for my own safety. I picked up a rider this morning who told me his girlfriend called the Uber for him, which is why the app listed her as the rider. Odd but not particularly uncommon. Then during the drive I get a call from the “girlfriend”. She was trying to get an Uber car, and her app told her she was already on a trip, and since she wasn’t, what’s going on? I told her that there was a passenger in the car now who had told me she called Uber for him. She said she didn’t call Uber for anybody, and that I needed to cancel the ride so she could get an Uber herself. So basically, I had to stop the car right on the spot and tell the passenger to get out right now, in mid-drive. And he acted all confused, though he had heard both sides of my conversation with the woman over the speakerphone. And I told him he had to get out now or I would call the cops, as he had already admitted he was using someone else’s account. And then it struck me that if he had a violent streak, that what I said to him was not exactly the most … diplomatic means to keep in in check. But he grumbled for a bit about getting screwed in the bad way by his girlfriend, and got out. I was most of the way to his destination anyway – he had another 3 blocks or so to walk.
Later I called the cops and described what happened, and was told the only person who could file a complaint about this was the woman. Ok, though the guy was screwing over Uber, and me personally – no one’s going to pay me for that drive. Anyway, just happy to get out of that safely. It was the first time I had any fear at all for my physical safety, as improbable as the fear might be.
I am not an attorney, not a tax professional, not an accountant, not offering or selling tax advice, etc. All that good stuff. I have been self-employed and/or (usually both) exclusively employed by companies I own for the past dozen years or so.
I noticed earlier that you mention Uber not with-holding and you being responsible for taxes. So, you are self-employed. Besides my minor nitpick that every job would have taxes (ex if you made $400/week stocking shelves at Kroger overnight as your second job, you wouldn’t actually see $400 either), there’s this: Some expenses related to your car will be deductible from your earnings. So your 15.3ish% SE tax and all that is going to apply to less than the total earnings. I can’t tell you what exactly are going to be deductible expenses, like I don’t know if all your car washes come right off the top, or if your car payment does (or a prorate), or if you get to depreciate the car. I can’t give that advice and I really don’t know, but some of it is. I have to imagine at the very least you can take the standard mileage deduction if you don’t/cant itemize gas, maintenance, etc. It’s possible that your taxable earnings will be considerably lower than the economic benefit you receive. On the other hand it could go the other way, too- if the wear and tear and stress on the vehicle and you isn’t adequately offset, maybe you make more on paper than what you really receive.
Fascinating thread and interesting reading!
Apparently I’m something of an oddity in my professional field as I’ve never used Uber (as far as I know there’s no Lyft operating in Australia).
While I work with a lot of 20somethings who don’t bat an eyelid at the idea of summoning an Uber vehicle with their smartphone, it’s not something I’m really comfortable with - partly because the service is technically illegal in my state and partly because I don’t go out to nightclubs or anything interesting that might necessitate an Uber vehicle. 
Last weekend I had a corporate CEO as a passenger from the airport. A couple of days later I drove another person from the company and mentioned I’d just met the CEO. He says, “Bill?! I wonder why he’s flying commercial. He has 3 planes, a pilot’s license, and 2 pilots on staff to fly him around.” Bill was showing his daughter around college campuses to help her pick out a school, and I suppose he decided that he didn’t want to justify using a company plane for personal travel.
I’ve discovered a new calling. I’m the Dr. Phil to drunk UW Madison students, who I’m driving someplace to either get drunker or to sleep it off. “Should I text him?” – Yes. “My boss told me not to hook up with my co-worker, the HE hooked up with her.” – Keep your distance. But he had already hooked up with her, and his boss hooked up with her the next weekend. Yada yada yada.
Oh, the trials and travails! I need a sign to attach to my sun visor, so I can flip it down and show – THE DOCTOR IS IN --just like Lucy. And I gotta figure out a way to monetize it.
I met with an accountant this week to learn more about the tax issues related to Uber and having a small business.
The most important thing I learned is that I’m miscalculating my Uber income. I thought my that after Uber collected the fare and deducted its fees and percentages, the remainder that is paid to me is my gross income. But that’s not correct. The entire fare is my gross income, and Uber is deducting it’s fees and percentages from my earnings. This ups my gross income by about 30%, and I will end up having to deduct all these fees to calculate taxable income.
Also, I can safely deduct $1500 annually for using a portion of my home as office space. The IRS has a relatively new simplified deduction for home office referred to as “Safe Harbor”. The previous method involved more calculation and more thorough record-keeping to justify the deduction.
The standard deduction of 54 cents/mile for my Uber driving includes both gas, maintenance and insurance, though interestingly, not car washes. He recommended I deduct the entire cost of my smart phone costs.
He also tells me that, for a number of Uber drivers he does taxes for that have the same earnings expectations as me (in the $25K annual neighborhood), that generally the deductions reduce that to around $6k in actual taxable income. And he recommends the idea of simply increasing the withholding of taxes on my regular day job, and not submitting an estimated quarterly withholding payment to the IRS.