[ghaff]

The paper actually uses a $0.30/mile figure. "A Median driver generates $0.59 per mile of driving, and incurs costs of $0.30 per mile."

The paper actually seems to be trying to make the point that Uber drivers are gaming the tax system because their actual costs are lower than the IRS allowance.

$0.30 seems like a fairly reasonable number and it also matches up well with renting a car that's intended to be driven for a week like this and just buying gas for it. (There's also some cost associated with deadheading to the next pickup.)

The $0.59/mile revenue does seem a bit low. UberX or Lyft would seem to typically have pricing in the neighborhood of $1.00 to $1.50 per mile of which about 75% goes to the driver. So $1/mile would seem likely to be a better revenue number in which case the net is more like $0.70/mile and I would have to believe most drivers, even in a larger city, are driving 10 miles or more in a typical hour.

I doubt driving for these services is a huge win once all costs are taken into account but it seems closer to being a minimum wage job than a total bust.

[eddieplan9]

Thanks for pointing out my mistake. You are right. I edited my comment.

To be fair, if the point is to compare profit, then we also need to consider that a traditional worker making minimum wage also needs to commute to work. The average commute of a worker is 30 miles round trip [1]. The cost of that will eat into their earning as well and cannot be deducted from their taxes.

[1] https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pu...

[ghaff]

It's sort of a weird point which, if it belongs anywhere at all, probably belongs in a different paper. It's a reasonable question to ask whether IRS guidelines that were mostly designed in the context of standard business deductions are really appropriate for driving services where most drivers are buying cars that are optimized for the role.

But it's also pretty much a totally orthogonal point to one about how little Uber drivers make.