RIDEGURU
HI All,
Upon doing my taxes, something important came to mind that I had not considered at a potentially huge personal cost!
It is no secret that I have urged people to turn off Uber rather than use DM when Uber takes a HUGE percentage of the driver's take.* (even to call in and tell them you would have been online if they stopped stealing.)
The problem is (if you are using the app to track miles) that the mileage is not counted in the app for these rides. If you are driving home for an hour or two a night, then this is costing you considerably. On any given night I may be forty minutes to two hours from home... Highway driving that could be 80+ miles. Local that could be 20+ miles.
Lets go low here: 20 miles x 3 days x 52 weeks x .54 cents per mile = $1,684 deduction at tax time - potentially lost if tracking miles with the app.
(Note: I track miles manually, but use the apps as reference.)
Perhaps it would be best to keep the app on and decline rides??? Hate for my acceptance rate to go down.
* (Uber now takes %15 to %50 of the drivers take when using destination mode. It is ridiculous, unethical, and stealing. They only take the percentages off of the riders portion and not Uber's and claim to give it to riders that do not use DM mode. Other riders may receive a dollar a week... No one thinks this is a good idea who drives, even the passengers are upset.)
Comments
Sorry, but my numbers differ from yours. Using a destination filter works better than casually driving, because you're not eating a lot of dead miles doing unprofitable shorties. KEEP A PHYSICAL LOG of your mileage and do the math rather than always using an app to do it for you.
Destination filters are the only thing that makes driving worth my time. It's also worth noting that since the decreased earnings from using a filter were rolled back, there is no reason to not use them to your advantage.