Rideshare & Delivery Net Pay Calculator
The week, the miles and the tax
Your result will appear here
Fill in the fields on the left and this updates as you type.
Know what this estimate is based on
- Jurisdiction
- General mathematical model
- Scope and limitations
- Planning indicator only. It does not assess every part of a household's finances or replace individualized professional advice.
- Source links checked
- Jul 30, 2026
Built and regression-tested by Smart Tools Lab. It has not been individually reviewed by a licensed financial, tax, or legal professional.
How to use
- 01
Enter the gross the app paid this week — fares, tips and promotions together, the figure before any cost of yours comes out.
- 02
Enter the hours you were LOGGED IN, including all the waiting time nobody pays for, and then the hours you were actually on a trip. The gap between the two is where the platform's advertised hourly rate comes from.
- 03
Enter the miles driven including deadhead miles between trips, then your car's real miles per gallon and what you pay a gallon. Fuel is derived from those three rather than asked for, because miles, mpg and a pump price are numbers you can check and "what do you spend on gas a week" is not.
- 04
Add the cash costs the app never mentions: tolls and parking, phone and data, and the car washes, water, snacks and rideshare insurance rider. Then set your federal bracket and the weeks a year you drive.
- 05
Read the net per ONLINE hour against the app's own figure, then the four-way table underneath — gross, after cash costs, after tax, and after charging every mile at the IRS standard rate. The last row is the car wearing out, and it is the cost drivers feel last.
Formula
Fuel = miles ÷ mpg × the price a gallon. Cash costs = fuel + tolls + phone + other weekly costs. Cash net = gross − cash costs. Mileage deduction = miles × the IRS standard rate. Taxable profit = gross − mileage deduction − the NON-vehicle cash costs (tolls, phone, supplies), floored at zero. Fuel is deliberately not subtracted a second time: the standard mileage rate already covers it, and you may take the standard rate or actual expenses, never both. Self-employment tax = taxable profit × 92.35% × 15.3%. Income tax = (taxable profit − half the self-employment tax) × your bracket. Take-home for the week = cash net − total tax. Net per ONLINE hour = take-home ÷ hours logged in — the headline, because the waiting hours are hours of your life. The economic view charges every mile at the IRS rate rather than only the fuel bought: economic net = gross − mileage deduction − non-vehicle cash costs − total tax.
Example
$950 of fares, tips and promotions across 42 hours logged in, 27 of them actually on a trip, driving 780 miles in a car doing 26 mpg with gas at $3.15. Fuel is 30 gallons, $94.50, plus $35 of tolls, $15 of phone and $25 of supplies — $169.50 of cash costs, leaving $781. The mileage deduction is 780 × $0.76 = $593, so taxable profit is $950 − $593 − $75 = $282 rather than $950. Self-employment tax is 15.3% on 92.35% of that, $40; income tax at a 12% bracket after the deductible half of it is $31; $71 in total. Take-home is $709, which is $16.88 per online hour against the $22.62 the app displays — $5.73 an hour overstated, $241 this week and $11,561 across 48 weeks. Measured against trip time only it flatters to $26.26 an hour, which simply ignores the 15 hours of waiting, 36% of every hour logged in. Net per mile is $0.909 against $1.218 gross. Charge every mile at the $0.76 IRS rate instead of only the gas and the week nets $211, or $5.02 an hour — the difference is the car wearing out.
Definitions
- Hours online
- Time logged in and available, including waiting between requests. The honest denominator for an hourly rate, and the one platforms usually replace with trip time.
- Deadhead miles
- Miles driven with the app on but no passenger or order in the car — to a pickup, repositioning, or returning from a drop-off. Business miles, and deductible.
- Standard mileage rate
- The IRS per-mile figure that replaces every vehicle expense at once — fuel, maintenance, tyres, insurance and depreciation. 72.5 cents January to June 2026, 76 cents from July.
- Self-employment tax
- 15.3% covering both halves of Social Security and Medicare, charged on 92.35% of net earnings. Roughly half of what you pay is deductible against income tax.
- Taxable profit
- Gross earnings less the mileage deduction and the non-vehicle business costs. Far smaller than gross, which is why a driver's tax bill is smaller than the headline suggests.
- 1099-K
- The platform's report to the IRS, generally showing the total charged to customers before the platform's own fees. Larger than your deposits, and the fees are deductible only if you claim them.
Good to know
The hour the app does not count
Every platform reports gross per hour, and the number is true in the narrow sense that gross divided by hours is what it says. It is also the least useful figure available to a driver, for three separate reasons that stack. It contains none of your costs. It contains none of your tax. And several platforms improve it further by dividing only by time spent on a trip, which quietly deletes the waiting from the denominator. On the default week, $950 across 42 hours logged in is $22.62 an hour — a figure a driver could reasonably use to decide the job is worth doing. After $169.50 of fuel, tolls, phone and supplies and $71 of tax, the same week paid $16.88 an hour, an overstatement of $5.73 for every hour online, $241 across the week and $11,561 across 48 weeks. Measured against trip time only, the week flatters up to $26.26, but that figure ignores 15 hours — 36% of every hour logged in — spent parked, circling, or waiting for a request to come in. The reason the waiting belongs in the denominator is not accounting pedantry. Those hours are unavailable for anything else. You cannot leave the car, cannot start another shift, cannot be at home; you are working in every sense except the one the platform pays for. A driver comparing this job against an hourly one is comparing 42 hours of committed time against 42 hours of committed time, and the honest comparison uses the same denominator on both sides. That is why the headline on this page is net per ONLINE hour and not net per trip hour, even though the trip-hour figure is more flattering and easier to like.
Mileage or actual expenses, and never both
The single largest number on a gig driver's tax return is the vehicle deduction, and the choice between the two methods trips up nearly every first-year filer. The STANDARD MILEAGE RATE is one figure per mile that replaces every vehicle expense at once — fuel, oil, maintenance, tyres, repairs, insurance, registration and depreciation. The ACTUAL EXPENSE method totals every real receipt and deducts the business-use share of them. You may take one or the other, and for most drivers the standard rate wins comfortably, particularly on an older paid-off car whose real cash costs are low while its per-mile allowance is not. The rate is not stable in 2026: 72.5 cents from January to June, 76 cents from July, so a full year needs its two halves weighted rather than one rate applied throughout. The trap this page is built around is subtler than the choice itself. If you take the standard rate, fuel is ALREADY inside it, and subtracting the gas again to reach taxable profit double-counts a cost you have already deducted. That is why the tax arithmetic here runs off gross less the mileage deduction less the non-vehicle cash costs, and reaches $282 of taxable profit on the default week rather than $950 or $781. Which miles count is the other place drivers lose money, invariably in their own disfavour. Every mile driven with the app on and the intent to accept is a business mile: to the pickup, repositioning between requests, and returning from a drop-off in a dead zone. Only the personal commute at the beginning and end of the shift is out. A driver who logs only on-trip miles understates the deduction by a third or more, and the record needed to defend it is contemporaneous — a mileage app running in the background, or the platform's own summary plus your odometer readings.
The tax nobody withholds
An employee never sees half of their FICA. They pay 7.65% out of the paycheck and the employer quietly pays the other 7.65% on top, and the arrangement is invisible enough that most people believe payroll tax is 7.65%. A self-employed driver is both parties, so the rate is 15.3% — 12.4% Social Security plus 2.9% Medicare — and nobody withholds a cent of it. Two features soften the number. The tax is charged on 92.35% of net earnings rather than all of them, a rough adjustment for the employer half that an employee would not have been taxed on. And roughly half of what you pay comes back as an above-the-line deduction against income tax, which is already reflected in the income-tax figure on this page. On the default week that produces $40 of self-employment tax and $31 of income tax at a 12% bracket: $71 in total on $282 of profit, which is about 7.5% of the $950 gross. What no feature softens is the TIMING, and that is where gig drivers get hurt. Because nothing is withheld, the money sits in your account looking like income until the following April. The system's answer is four estimated payments a year, and the penalty for skipping them is charged for each quarter the underpayment existed — it is not waived by paying in full at filing, and it applies even to someone who ends up owing nothing overall because a spouse over-withheld. The practical defence is mechanical rather than clever: work out the tax on the week the week is earned, using a page like this one, and move it into a separate account the same day. A driver who sets aside 20% of the profit figure rather than 20% of the gross will be close enough, and will not spend a quarter of the year's earnings before discovering it was never theirs.
The car is the business, and the business is depreciating
Fuel is felt at the pump. Tyres, brakes, a transmission, a set of shocks and above all the resale value are felt years later and all at once, which is why a driver can have a good year on paper and discover the car is worth thousands less than the mental account assumed. The IRS standard mileage rate is the best available estimate of the whole cost of running a car per mile, and this page uses it twice for two different purposes. As a TAX figure it is the deduction. As an ECONOMIC figure it is what the miles really cost, and the four-way table charges them at the full rate to produce the honest bottom line: $950 gross, $781 after cash costs, $709 after tax, and $211 once every mile is charged at $0.76 rather than only the $94.50 of gas actually bought. That last figure is $5.02 an hour. Neither $16.88 nor $5.02 is the wrong answer — the first is what you can spend this week and the second is what the week actually earned once the car's consumption is counted — but a driver who only ever looks at the first is spending the car's resale value without noticing. Two further items belong in the same mental account. The first is insurance. A personal auto policy usually excludes driving for hire, and platform coverage is layered by period: logged in with no request accepted is typically contingent liability only, with no collision or comprehensive on your own car, while the accepted-to-drop-off period carries substantial commercial coverage. The gap is real and the fix is a rideshare endorsement from your own insurer, at a fraction of a commercial policy. The second is the 1099-K, which generally reports the total charged to customers before the platform's service fee, booking fees and commission came out — a figure that can exceed your deposits by a wide margin. Those fees are deductible, but only if you claim them, and they live in the platform's annual summary rather than on the tax form. A return that starts from the 1099 alone overstates your income by exactly the platform's cut.
Frequently asked questions
Why is my real hourly rate so much lower than what the app shows?
Three reasons stacked on each other. The app's figure is gross, with none of your costs in it. It divides by the hours you were logged in — and some platforms flatter it further by dividing only by trip time, which ignores the waiting entirely. And nothing has been taken out for tax. On the default week, $950 across 42 online hours is $22.62 an hour to the app; after $169.50 of fuel, tolls, phone and supplies and $71 of tax it is $16.88, an overstatement of $5.73 an hour, $241 a week and $11,561 across 48 weeks.
Do I deduct my gas, or the mileage?
One or the other, never both. The standard mileage rate covers fuel, maintenance, tyres, insurance and depreciation together — on 780 miles at $0.76 that is $593, which is why taxable profit for the default week is $282 rather than $950. The alternative is the actual-expense method, where you total every real receipt and deduct the business-use share. For most drivers the standard rate wins comfortably. Note the 2026 rate moved mid-year: 72.5 cents January to June and 76 cents from July, so a full year needs the two halves weighted.
Do the miles between trips count?
Yes. Deadhead miles — driving to a pickup, repositioning between requests, driving back from a drop-off in a dead zone — are business miles as long as the app is on and you are available to accept. Only the personal commute at the start and end of the shift is excluded. Drivers who log only their on-trip miles routinely understate the deduction by a third or more, and the deduction is the largest number on a driver's return.
What is self-employment tax and why does nobody withhold it?
An employee pays 7.65% of FICA and the employer quietly pays the other half. A driver is both parties and pays 15.3% — but only on 92.35% of net earnings, and roughly half of what is paid comes back as an above-the-line deduction against income tax. On the default week that is $40, plus $31 of income tax at a 12% bracket, so $71 of tax on $282 of profit. Nobody withholds a cent of it, which is precisely what makes it dangerous: the money is in your account until April.
Do I have to make quarterly payments?
In most cases yes. Because nothing is withheld from a gig payout, four estimated payments a year replace the paycheck. The penalty for skipping them is charged for the underpayment in each quarter it existed, whether or not you eventually pay in full at filing, and it applies even to someone who ends up owing nothing overall because a spouse over-withheld. A rough rule that keeps most drivers safe is to set aside the self-employment tax and the income tax the week they are earned, in a separate account.
Why is the 1099 bigger than what actually reached my bank?
A 1099-K generally reports the total charged to riders and customers, before the platform's service fee, booking fees and commission came out — so the form can exceed your deposits by a wide margin. Those fees are deductible business expenses, but only if you claim them, and they usually sit in the platform's annual summary rather than on the tax form. Download that summary. A return that starts from the 1099 alone overstates your income by exactly the platform's cut.
Is my personal car insurance valid while I am driving for a platform?
Usually not. A personal auto policy typically excludes driving for hire, and the platform's own coverage is layered by period. Logged in with no request accepted is the thin period — often contingent liability only, with no collision or comprehensive on your own car. From accepting a request to drop-off the commercial coverage is substantial. The gap between those is real, and the fix is a rideshare endorsement from your own insurer, which costs a fraction of a commercial policy. An accident in the thin period on a policy that excludes hire can leave the car uninsured and the policy cancelled.
Why does the page show a second, much lower hourly figure?
Because there are two honest answers and they measure different things. The take-home figure, $16.88 an hour, is what you can actually spend this week — fuel and cash costs and tax are out, but the car's wear is not. The economic figure, $5.02 an hour, charges every mile at the full IRS standard rate instead of only the $94.50 of gas, which is the best available estimate of what a mile really costs once tyres, brakes, servicing and above all resale value are counted. Neither is wrong. The first is your cash; the second is what the week actually earned.