Who is talking, and what this is not. This how-to lives on the TaxMiles site for TaxMiles: Mileage Tracker, App Store id 6758579463 — not MileIQ, not Everlance, and not the separately listed app “Mileage Tracker for Taxes” (id 6758426140). It is general tax education and a decision worksheet, not tax advice and not a promise of any hourly rate. A deduction is not cash in the tank. Knowing whether a Saturday was worth it after the car is a different question from what you write on Schedule C.
The search is usually some version of: The app said $28 an hour. After gas I felt broke. Am I actually making money? That is a real problem, and it is a true hourly problem — not a platform tax guide, not a rate-split explainer, and not a feature comparison. Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Flex, Instacart, Grubhub, and Spark all quote gross. They do not subtract the empty miles, the restaurant wait, or the wear. Until you put a cost on the car and a clock on the unpaid time, you cannot tell whether a platform hour is worth keeping.
The relief is a number you can defend to yourself: dollars left after a honest car-cost model, divided by the hours you actually spent. Once you have that, you can drop a weak app, change zones, or stop treating “online time” as a wage. You do not need a dashboard full of invented averages. You need last week’s figures and a worksheet that does not double-count miles or gas.
The short version: write down gross pay from each app. Count real hours, including unpaid wait and deadhead. Log each physical mile once. Price those miles at the 2026 IRS rate for the date of the drive — 72.5¢ through June 30, 76¢ from July 1 — as a bundled car-cost proxy, or use your own actual costs. Do not do both in the same worksheet. True hourly = (gross − car cost) ÷ real hours. That is a decision number. The tax deduction is a separate line.
Evidence note (qualitative only — no GSC). We do not have Google Search Console or analytics for this topic and do not invent clicks, rankings, impressions, or traffic. The page exists because the live blog already covers platform tax guides, business vs commuting miles, multi-app double-counting, the rate split, SE tax, and CPA export — and there is still no dedicated worksheet for take-home after vehicle costs, the high-intent “am I actually making money?” question. TaxMiles includes True Hourly Wage after car costs by platform (Taxes → Tax Toolkit). The outcome is a number you can use to keep or drop a shift, not a scoreboard.
Step 1: Write down gross pay from each app
Open last week — or one shift you remember clearly — in Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Flex, Instacart, Grubhub, Spark, or whatever you ran. Copy the number the app calls earnings. Include tips and promotions. Note whether the screen is before or after platform service fees; use the amount that actually hit your wallet or your weekly deposit, and stay consistent week to week.
That figure is revenue. It is not hourly. It is not profit. It is not what Schedule C will show after mileage. If you ran two apps the same day, write two lines. Do not add them into one blob yet; you will need the split in Step 6.
What this step is not: treating a 1099 as take-home. A 1099-K or 1099-NEC is still gross. Mileage and other expenses sit between that paper and taxable profit. Platform-specific tax walkthroughs: DoorDash taxes, plus the Uber/Lyft, Flex, Instacart, Grubhub, and Spark guides on this blog.
Step 2: Count the hours you actually spent, including unpaid wait and deadhead
App “online” or “on trip” time is a marketing hourly. Your car was still running — or you were still sitting in it — while you:
- Drove empty to the next hotspot or store (deadhead)
- Waited on a restaurant, shopper, or airport queue
- Sat through a declined offer you had already committed the block to
Use clock time from when you left for work mode until you were done, minus a genuine personal stop. If you only have the app’s online hours, add a honest estimate of the unpaid tail. A $24 “online hour” that took 90 minutes of real life is a $16 hour before the car even enters.
Home to a regular first pickup or warehouse is usually commuting, not a paid business hop. Unpaid miles between paid trips while you stay available are usually business deadhead — they cost time and rubber either way. How to log the purpose: are deadhead miles deductible.
Step 3: Log business miles once — one physical mile, one cost
The car does not care that Uber and DoorDash were both open. One road, one mile, one cost. If you add the Uber weekly miles summary plus the DoorDash miles summary plus a GPS tracker, you will invent a car you do not own.
Practical order:
- Keep one mileage log (GPS auto-detect plus same-day classification). Platform screenshots are a checksum, not a second log.
- Classify each trip: business, commuting, or personal. Only business miles go into the car-cost line of this worksheet.
- Write a purpose sentence, not just a swipe: “DoorDash, restaurant to customer” or “Empty hop, downtown cell to next offer.”
- If two apps show the same hop, count it once. Reconcile: track mileage across Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash without double-counting.
The weekly habit behind those rows is how to keep an IRS-ready mileage log. You need the same five fields for the tax deduction later. Tonight you are only making sure the miles in the true-hourly formula are real.
Step 4: Price the miles — tax math and economic math are different
This is the step people get backwards. Hold both ideas at once:
| Tax deduction (Schedule C) | Economic true hourly (keep / drop a shift) | |
|---|---|---|
| What you are answering | How many business miles can I substantiate, and at which rate? | After the car, was this hour worth my time? |
| Standard mileage | Business miles × 72.5¢ (Jan 1–Jun 30) or 76¢ (Jul 1–Dec 31), by trip date | You may use that same bundled rate as a cost proxy |
| Gas, oil, repairs, insurance, depreciation | Already inside standard mileage. Do not deduct them again on that car / year | They are real cash and wear. If you use the IRS rate as the proxy, do not also subtract a gas receipt in the same worksheet |
| Parking and tolls on work trips | Can still stack on top of standard mileage | Add them as extra cash cost. They are not inside the cents-per-mile rate |
| Actual-expense method | Gas and the rest instead of standard mileage, plus a business-use % | If you already track actual cents per mile for decisions, use that model — not IRS rate plus gas |
2026 business standard mileage rates (Notice 2026-10 / Announcement 2026-11):
- 72.5¢ per business mile driven January 1 through June 30
- 76¢ per business mile driven July 1 through December 31
The rate follows the road date. A June 18 trip you price on September 12 is still 72.5¢. One annual total × one rate is the wrong deduction and the wrong proxy. Why the year has two halves: standard mileage vs actual expenses.
For the worksheet, pick one car-cost model:
- IRS-rate proxy (simplest): business miles × the rate in effect that day. This is what TaxMiles True Hourly Wage does: it prices tracked business miles at the IRS rate and subtracts that bundle (gas, maintenance, and depreciation combined, as a proxy). It is not a receipt for every fill-up.
- Your actual cents-per-mile: gas for the period ÷ all miles driven, plus a wear / insurance / payment allowance you actually pay. Use this if your car is unusually cheap or unusually expensive versus the IRS bundle. Then do not also apply 76¢ in the same true-hourly line.
Phone, mounts, bags, and a qualifying home office are not car costs. They can still stack with the mileage deduction on the return. Leave them out of true hourly unless you want a fully loaded number — and if you do, label it that way.
Step 5: Divide. That is true hourly.
The formula is boring on purpose:
True hourly = (gross pay − car cost − work parking/tolls) ÷ real hours
Illustration only — not a typical result, not a promise, not an average:
| Line | Figure |
|---|---|
| DoorDash deposit for one Saturday (Sep 2026) | $142.00 |
| App “online” hours | 6.0 |
| Clock hours including wait + deadhead | 7.5 |
| Business miles (one GPS log) | 68 |
| IRS-rate proxy (68 × 76¢) | $51.68 |
| App hourly ($142 ÷ 6.0) | $23.67 |
| True hourly after the car ($142 − $51.68) ÷ 7.5 | $12.04 |
The Saturday did not become “not work.” It became a $12 decision instead of a $24 story. Some weeks the gap is small. Some zones go negative after 76¢ and a long airport deadhead. That is the point of running the sheet: you find out before you give that platform another month.
This number is still before self-employment tax. SE tax is 15.3% on 92.35% of net profit, not on the 1099. Mileage comes off first. Half of SE tax is deductible. If you need a set-aside, compute it on profit after the car deduction, not on app hourly.
Step 6: Split by platform without double-counting miles
A blended hourly hides the app that is wasting the car. Run the same formula per platform for the week:
- Gross and hours from each app’s own screen.
- Miles: assign each classified business trip to the platform that generated it when the purpose note says so.
- Shared empty hops (you were online on two apps): pick one owner or split the miles once. Do not give the same 4-mile reposition to Uber and DoorDash.
- If you cannot attribute miles cleanly, prorate the week’s vehicle-cost total by each platform’s share of earnings — that is a fallback, not a second count of the miles. TaxMiles uses that fallback on the by-platform card because a GPS mile does not always know which icon paid.
Then look at the two (or three) true hourlies. A platform that wins on gross and loses after 76¢ is usually a long-distance or high-wait app. A platform that wins after the car is the one whose trips are dense. Keep the dense one. Cap the other. That is the product differentiator in one sentence: True Hourly Wage after car costs, by platform, so you can see which app is actually worth your time.
How TaxMiles does this if you would rather not rebuild the sheet
Features as proof, not as the lede. TaxMiles: Mileage Tracker (id 6758579463) auto-detects drives on iPhone, lets you swipe-classify the same day, and applies 72.5¢ or 76¢ by trip date. Under Taxes → Tax Toolkit → True Hourly Wage you log a shift (platform, earnings, hours). The screen subtracts tracked business miles priced at the IRS rate and shows net dollars per hour for the week, month, or year, plus a by-platform split. Shifts also feed the tax estimate.
Free is auto-detect and swipe classification for 40 automatic trips a month, no credit card. A full-time multi-app week will blow past 40; that is a volume gate. Pro is $5.99/month, $39.99/year, or $79.99 lifetime, with a 7-day trial on the subscriptions — unlimited trips, CPA PDF/CSV export, history import. Buy it because you will actually log, not because a blog post told you to. If you are under 40 automatic trips a month and you will still write hours and earnings, Free can run the true-hourly math.
Who this worksheet — and TaxMiles — is not for
- You are a W-2-only employee hunting a federal unreimbursed mileage deduction. That federal path is often blocked; check the current Form 2106 and what is left by state before you build a contractor-style true hourly.
- You will not log miles or hours. No app invents a wage from a locked Home Screen. The toolkit stays empty until a shift and some classified business miles exist.
- You want the mileage app to file the return. TaxMiles exports a log and shows a decision number. It does not file.
- You are on Android. TaxMiles is iPhone / iPad, iOS 17+.
See the hourly after the car, not just the app.
TaxMiles: Mileage Tracker, App Store id 6758579463. Auto-detect on Free (40 trips / month). True Hourly Wage lives in the Tax Toolkit — IRS-rate car-cost proxy, by platform. Pro is $5.99/month, $39.99/year, or $79.99 lifetime. Not MileIQ. Not Everlance.
Download TaxMiles on the App StoreFrequently Asked Questions
Is the IRS mileage rate the same thing as my true hourly wage?
No. The rate is a per-mile tax deduction. True hourly is earnings minus a car-cost model, divided by real hours. Using 72.5¢ / 76¢ as the cost proxy is allowed for the decision. It does not turn the deduction into cash.
Can I subtract gas on top of the standard mileage rate?
Not on the tax return if you claim standard mileage on that car for the year — gas, oil, repairs, insurance, and depreciation are already inside the rate. Parking and tolls can still stack; see parking and tolls with standard mileage. In a true-hourly worksheet, pick the IRS proxy or actual cents-per-mile, not both.
Which 2026 IRS mileage rate do I use in the worksheet?
The rate on the date of the drive: 72.5¢ through June 30, 76¢ from July 1. Pricing a June trip in September does not upgrade it to 76¢.
Does TaxMiles calculate true hourly wage after car costs?
Yes. Taxes → Tax Toolkit → True Hourly Wage. Log platform, earnings, and hours. The app subtracts tracked business miles at the IRS rate and shows net $/hr by period and by platform. Free: 40 automatic trips a month. Pro: $5.99/mo, $39.99/yr, or $79.99 lifetime.
Is true hourly after car costs the same as take-home after taxes?
No. SE tax and income tax still apply to net profit. Mileage comes off first. Walkthrough: self-employment tax for gig drivers.
Related reading: what counts as a business mile, deadhead miles, multi-app without double-counting, parking and tolls, write-offs that stack with mileage, DoorDash taxes, self-employment tax, standard mileage vs actual expenses, and IRS-ready mileage log.
This article is general tax education for U.S. federal Schedule C filers, not legal, tax, or accounting advice and not a guarantee of any hourly wage, deduction, or result. Worked figures are illustrations only. Publication 463, contemporaneous-record rules, and IRS mileage rates can change; confirm Notice 2026-10, Announcement 2026-11, and the current forms, or work with a licensed professional. We do not have Google Search Console or analytics for this topic and do not report traffic, rankings, or impressions. TaxMiles: Mileage Tracker (App Store id 6758579463) is not affiliated with the IRS, Apple, Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, Grubhub, Spark, Amazon, MileIQ, or Everlance, and is not Mileage Tracker for Taxes (id 6758426140). Feature gates and prices are the current Free / Pro / Lifetime plans on taxmilesapp.com as of September 12, 2026, and can change.