[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.