How much does a Lyft driver earn?

Lyft sends 1099(-K, presumably)s to drivers who make over $20k from 200+ transactions a year. This is the same reporting system used by Stripe and Paypal. (I have lots lying around.)

It would be exceptionally unwise to fail to report income which has been 1099-ed to you, and very unwise to fail to report substantial income merely because one does not have a corresponding 1099 for it, because (particularly in the case where one party has all the information required to reconstruct your income and that one party can simultaneously uncover millions of dollars of under-reporting) audits exist.

Nice feedback on my blog post, y'all. Thanks. Estimating exactly how much a driver receives from Lyft, versus that driver's expenses, is really difficult. So I took some shortcuts with easily searchable published data and ended up with just $3.45/hour. In a G+ discussion it came up that if you could externalize most ownership expenses (e.g. driving your dad's car), it would be reasonable to get up to $17/hour with all my other estimates being the same.

In a best-case scenario you'd be picking up someone whose destination is where you were already headed, in which case your 80% of the payment would be pure profit. If you drove that person for a full hour, to a place where you were already headed, and they paid you $43.75, then you really would get that $35/hour that Lyft advertises for drivers.

In the end, these estimates are hard. Lyft themselves probably have real good data on the matter. Maybe they'll give us some real numbers, and show us how they can be cheaper than cabs while simultaneously (if their advertising for drivers is to be believed) paying their drivers a lot more than typical cabbies.

There's no conceivable sum of money you could pay me to put an ugly pink mustache on my car. Why do they think this mustache fad is still funny?

Tips are taxable income in the US.

For people already with a car, the variable costs of driving (maintenance, fuel, etc.) is usually 25-45 cents (lower end is a economy car getting 30mpg city, higher end is a less fuel-efficient, less reliable car). Using 35c/mile, and an average urban driving speed, that's $5.25/hour.

Even idling half the time, that's 17.50-5.25=$12.25, better than many pizza delivery / the average urban courier rate. Delivery drivers often get far less than $35 while having to pay their own vehicle costs.

The calculus changes a lot just based on that single number, average speed. I'm sure the $35/hr number would be far higher if everyone was going on freeways between trips and racking up the miles like crazy (assuming Lyft incorporates distance into its pricing heavily)