Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I quit: Miseries of an Uber driver

salon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 92 posts

Re: I quit: Miseries of an Uber driver

#71

Post by bane »

Retric wrote: post #58
bane wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an example where what I provided was incorrect? - Car payments are the same - Gas is the same - Insurance is the same - Vehicle wear and tear is the same I'm sure I made a mistake somewhere or overlooked something...

At the start: "You work 215 hours per month on average (50 * 4.3 weeks) and make $4,300 revenue during that time (or $51,600/year). - Subtract self-employment tax 15.3% - ~$7900 - Taxable income 37,650 - ~$5,300 in taxes so subtract that" You don't pay self employment tax on revenue you pay it on profit. So if your paying ex:10,000 in expences for gas then you would pay (51,600 - 10,000) * 15.3% = 6364$ in self emplo…

Yup, you're correct. I should deduct the expenses first.

Re: I quit: Miseries of an Uber driver

#72

Post by x0x0 »

bko wrote: post #61

> After waiting 20 minutes, I called the driver, who did not speak any version of English I am familiar with. He claimed to be relatively near my house but was unable to tell me how he was going to get there. I canceled and tried again. This time I got a young woman who also apparently didn’t speak English well. As someone whose parents speak English with accents, it really makes me cringe when some Americans complai…

It's not xenophobic to want not to have so much difficulty that it interferes with the service. When you have a hard time communicating directions, it's a problem. Which is what this person experienced. Xenophobia is disliking of people, not disliking the inability to share directions.

Re: I quit: Miseries of an Uber driver

#73

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

microtonal wrote: post #18
mbrameld wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been a synonym now for a long time.

That does not mean one can't protest it ;). You need a way to refer to an actual lousy GPS as well (long fix time, inaccurate). Lumping everything together makes it hard to be precise (like using 'begging the question' wrongly somewhere else in these comments ;)).

"protest _against_ it"

Sorry. I'm still fighting a rearguard action against you crazy Americans' perversion of our language a "long time" ago.

(I know. I know. Someone will be along in a minute to tell me that "protest it" was original authentic British English centuries ago.)

Re: I quit: Miseries of an Uber driver

#74

Post by Retric »

zb wrote: post #68
Retric wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should be using pre tax numbers for expenses.

He should be using pre-tax numbers for everything - not only is he not deducting any expenses, he's comparing the final after-tax number with the before-tax minimum wage. Still, assuming his research is accurate at best it comes out at like ~$12 per hour before tax, unless you play russian roulette on the insurance. This of course assumes that it's your full-time job, otherwise the car payments will further reduce th…

Sorry, your wrong.

Self employment tax is higher than just social security tax so you need to look at after tax earrings to compare a 1099 job to a w-2 job. Also, more expences can be deducted as an uber driver than a wage slave ex: a percentage of your cell phone bill and car depreciation.

Re: I quit: Miseries of an Uber driver

#75

Post by dougabug »

aetherson wrote: post #49
dnautics wrote: post #27

I'm not sure how her back to back drives add up to only $10/hr. I drive Uber/Lyft in San Diego, routinely don't get back-to-back rides and have some long stretches of downtime, and usually make $1000 on a 50 hour on-call week (~30h of actual drive time). So that's about $20/hour. If you minus gas (~150/wk) that's a little bit less; I drive a honda insight, which gets slightly worse gas mileage than the prius, and the…

Yeah, $10/hour sounds strangely low. Perhaps she's getting a more-frequent dose of the GPS issues than most, or something else, but I think we can take it as given that the median UberX driver -- while not making the $30+/hour that Uber would like you to imagine -- is making comfortably north of $10/hour. If they weren't, they simply wouldn't still be driving for Uber.

She dropped out after had enough experience and data to do the math. It seems like there are a number of people not realistically adding up their true costs.

Re: I quit: Miseries of an Uber driver

#76

Post by dougabug »

mathattack wrote: post #67

I can see the issue here. Someone says, "Why is this so hard on me when the company shuffling paper is making all the money?" I could see Lyft or Uber having a competitive advantage if they gave equity or something like equity to drivers. Pre-IPO equity may be difficult for regulatory reasons around # of shareholders, but perhaps bonuses based on valuation?

I think these companies want to avoid making the drivers look any more like employees than they already do.

Frankly, it seems to me that they are in fact employees, over which Uber exerts enormous control, to the point of spying on them, monitoring what they post on social media, what they say to customers about the company, supplying talking points, directing them to disregard certain local transportation regulations.

Re: I quit: Miseries of an Uber driver

#77

Post by dnautics »

bane wrote: post #50
dnautics wrote: post #27

I'm not sure how her back to back drives add up to only $10/hr. I drive Uber/Lyft in San Diego, routinely don't get back-to-back rides and have some long stretches of downtime, and usually make $1000 on a 50 hour on-call week (~30h of actual drive time). So that's about $20/hour. If you minus gas (~150/wk) that's a little bit less; I drive a honda insight, which gets slightly worse gas mileage than the prius, and the…

> and usually make $1000 on a 50 hour on-call week (~30h of actual drive time). So that's about $20/hour. Now subtract car payments, insurance, wear and tear, etc. Here's an example of how this breaks down: You work 215 hours per month on average (50 * 4.3 weeks) and make $4,300 revenue during that time (or $51,600/year). - Subtract self-employment tax 15.3% - ~$7900 - Taxable income 37,650 - ~$5,300 in taxes so subt…

So. If I were still a postdoc (~40k/year with three years of experience), I would still be paying car payments, insurance. Now, I make those payments and (I think) I can deduct them from my taxes.

Of course comparing to a postdoc is unfair because you're putting in ~80 hours a week, which is certainly below minimum wage, and the postdoc market is totally insane.

Nonetheless, I am definitely making more than minimum wage - for the first time in my life I have savings and investments. Not to mention the fact that I have launched a nonprofit, sinking quite a bit of my own out-of-pocket to get that running. Granted, the take home was much higher at the beginning of the year (avg 1400/wk) than it is now.

Re: I quit: Miseries of an Uber driver

#78

Post by dnautics »

bane wrote: post #69
evjim wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The IRS $.56/mile takes into account estimated gas costs, wear&tear and insurance. You are double dipping. Also income tax is deducted off of profits not driver revenue.

Yeah you're right. The IRS mileage covers insurance. You can alternately calculate your true expense and deduct that, for example, since he's operating a taxi service, he's probably required to have taxi insurance or risk committing insurance fraud. Since that insurance is much higher than normal car insurance, he probably can deduct more.

it's not a taxi service, and I have one of the insurance companies that is ok with ridesharing. I am sure they have plenty of actuarial data that allows them to set the rates accurately.

I'm not double dipping because I won't be deducting gasoline or insurance expenses as a part of the .56/mi deduction. (I don't keep my gas receipts)

Re: I quit: Miseries of an Uber driver

#79

Post by mathattack »

dougabug wrote: post #76
mathattack wrote: post #67

I can see the issue here. Someone says, "Why is this so hard on me when the company shuffling paper is making all the money?" I could see Lyft or Uber having a competitive advantage if they gave equity or something like equity to drivers. Pre-IPO equity may be difficult for regulatory reasons around # of shareholders, but perhaps bonuses based on valuation?

I think these companies want to avoid making the drivers look any more like employees than they already do. Frankly, it seems to me that they are in fact employees, over which Uber exerts enormous control, to the point of spying on them, monitoring what they post on social media, what they say to customers about the company, supplying talking points, directing them to disregard certain local transportation regulation…

True - it benefits Uber immensely from a tax perspective (and benefits?) for them to be independent consultants. It's also harder for independent consultants to unionize.
Post reply on HN