The short version. Uber and Lyft can each send a 1099-K for ride payments and a 1099-NEC for bonuses and referrals, plus a yearly summary that is not an IRS form. The 1099-K is what riders paid, not what you were deposited, so the platform’s service fees, booking fees and pass-through charges on the summary come back off as expenses. The “online miles” on both summaries are a useful cross-check but not your deduction: they usually include the drive from home to your first pickup zone (commuting), they know nothing about the other app you had open, and they stop the moment you go offline. Keep one dated log for the car, apply 72.5¢ to miles driven through June 30, 2026 and 76¢ from July 1, and use the summaries to prove the income side. Education, not tax advice.
This page is the rideshare side of the platform guides. The tax work every app shares — Schedule C, self-employment tax, what stacks on the mileage rate, quarterly payments — is in the delivery driver taxes hub and applies to passengers exactly as it does to food. Deductions specific to carrying people (rider amenities, cleaning, the phone) are in the rideshare driver tax guide. What is here is only what Uber and Lyft do differently: what their forms include, how to read their mileage numbers, and the rideshare trips that trip people up.
Uber and Lyft side by side
From Uber’s and Lyft’s own driver tax pages, checked September 30, 2026. Both platforms post documents by January 31 and email you when they are ready.
| Uber (rides) | Lyft | |
|---|---|---|
| 1099-K | Gross ride payments. Federal filing threshold $20,000 and 200 transactions. Uber lets you opt in to receive one below the threshold. | What passengers paid for your rides, including fees and taxes they paid. $20,000 and 200 rides federally; lower in some states. |
| 1099-NEC | Promotions, referrals and other non-ride payments | Non-ride earnings: referral, streak and other bonuses |
| Summary (not an IRS form) | Tax Summary: earnings breakdown, potentially deductible fees, online miles, and a monthly mileage breakdown | Annual Summary: rides, online miles, ride payments, non-ride earnings, and fees and expenses |
| Where to find it | drivers.uber.com → Tax Information; or the Driver app → Account → Tax Info → Tax Forms | Driver Dashboard → Tax Center → Documents |
| Online miles cover | Waiting for a trip, driving to the pickup, and on trip, while you are online | Waiting for a ride, en route to the passenger, and on the ride, while you are online |
Some of the platformsBoth platforms’ pages may still quote a $600 figure for the 1099-NEC.rsquo; help pages still quote the $600 1099-NEC figure that applied through 2025. For payments made in 2026 the federal 1099-NEC threshold is $2,000. Either way the threshold only decides whether a form is filed. Every dollar is reportable whether or not one arrives, and the Annual Summary or Tax Summary is how you total it when it does not. Where a 1099-K and a 1099-NEC could overlap, the reconciliation is in 1099-K vs 1099-NEC for gig drivers.
Why the rideshare 1099-K is bigger than your deposits
This is the rideshare-specific mistake that costs the most. The 1099-K reports what riders paid, before the platform took anything. Lyft says it outright: Box 1 includes fees and taxes your passengers paid. Uber’s Tax Summary breaks the gross figure into the pieces that were never yours: the Uber service fee, booking fees, airport and city fees, tolls collected from riders, sales tax and similar items.
- Report the gross. The IRS receives the 1099-K figure. Putting your bank deposits on Schedule C instead makes the return look like it is missing income.
- Deduct the platform’s share. Service fees and commissions are a business expense; on the current Schedule C they usually sit on the commissions-and-fees line. Pass-through charges riders paid (booking, airport and city fees, sales tax, tolls the rider covered) come off the same way so you are taxed on what you actually earned.
- Do not take tolls twice. A toll a rider reimbursed is inside the 1099-K and comes off as a pass-through. A toll you paid on an empty repositioning drive is your own expense. Either way, one toll is one deduction.
Older advice, including an earlier version of our own rideshare guide, says Uber and Lyft fees are “already netted out” of your 1099. For the rideshare 1099-K they are not. Use the fee lines on the summary. The Schedule C placement for the car itself is in claiming car expenses on Schedule C.
Reading online miles without over- or under-claiming
Online miles are the number most rideshare drivers copy straight onto the return. It is a good number to have and the wrong number to file as-is, for three reasons.
| What the online-miles total does | Effect on your deduction | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Counts the drive from home to your usual area if you went online in the driveway | Overstates. That first leg is usually commuting. | Mark the first drive of the day as commute unless it was already a pickup or you have a qualifying home office. |
| Counts personal stops made while still online | Overstates | Classify the errand as personal in your own log. The open app does not make it work. |
| Counts the same road on Uber and on Lyft when both were online | Overstates if you add the two totals | Never add the two summaries. One mile counts once. See multi-app tracking without double-counting. |
| Stops when you go offline | Can understate | A drive back toward a busy area to go online again, or to the airport lot to rejoin the queue, can still be business. Only your log records it. |
Uber’s annual Tax Summary also includes a monthly mileage breakdown. For 2026 that is the fastest way to check your own log’s June 30 split: January through June should be priced at 72.5¢ and July through December at 76¢. Lyft’s Annual Summary gives a yearly online-miles total. If you need a half-year cross-check from Lyft, use your weekly summaries, or better, your own log. The method for splitting a year at June 30 is in the 2026 IRS mileage rate guide.
Rideshare trips that are easy to misclassify
- Airport queues. Driving to the rideshare waiting lot while you are working is usually business. The hour parked in the queue adds no miles.
- Long rides that end far from home. Dropping someone 60 miles out and driving back empty toward your area while available for requests is usually business deadhead. If you go offline and head straight home, the last leg home is usually commuting, the same bookend as any other shift. See are deadhead miles deductible.
- Cancelled pickups. Miles driven toward a rider who cancelled are part of the work. They sit inside online miles on both platforms.
- First trip of the day. If rideshare is your only job and you go online at home, the drive to the first pickup is usually commuting unless home qualifies as your principal place of business. The rules are in business vs commuting miles and the home-office test for gig drivers.
- Side-gig drivers. Driving from your day job to your first ride is not business just because the app opened on the way. The drive from a regular workplace to a second job can be different; that is a fact-specific question for a preparer.
A worked example: one car, both apps
Illustration only. A driver runs Uber and Lyft on the same car in 2026. Uber’s Tax Summary shows 11,600 online miles. Lyft’s Annual Summary shows 7,300. Adding them gives 18,900, which is not the deduction: many of those hours had both apps online, and both totals include the drive from home to downtown on most days.
The driver’s own log for the car shows 8,900 business miles driven January 1 through June 30 and 9,600 from July 1, after marking the morning drive downtown as commute and a few online errands as personal. The deduction is 8,900 × $0.725 + 9,600 × $0.76 = $6,452.50 + $7,296 = $13,748.50. The summaries stay in the file as evidence that the work happened on those days, and the fee lines from both summaries go on Schedule C separately.
Two sanity checks from that example. The log (18,500) is larger than either platform’s total alone, which is normal when you drive for two apps and reposition between them. It is smaller than the two totals added together, which is also normal. If your log came out smaller than one app’s online miles, look for trips that were never recorded or were marked personal by mistake.
January checklist for rideshare drivers
- Download Uber’s Tax Summary and any 1099s from drivers.uber.com → Tax Information. Download Lyft’s Annual Summary and any 1099s from the Driver Dashboard → Tax Center → Documents.
- Check your legal name and address in each platform’s tax settings so the forms match your return.
- Put gross ride income from each 1099-K (or the summary’s ride payments, if no form came) and bonuses from each 1099-NEC (or non-ride earnings) on Schedule C once each.
- Take the platform service fees and pass-through charges from each summary as expenses.
- Use your own log for business miles, split at June 30 for the two 2026 rates. Keep the online-miles figures as a cross-check, not as the input.
- Add parking and tolls you paid yourself on work drives. They stack on the standard rate; gas does not. See parking and tolls with standard mileage.
I use Tax Miles on iPhone (App Store id 6758579463) for this: it detects each drive on its own, I mark the morning commute and any errands the same day, and the export applies 72.5¢ or 76¢ by trip date, so the Uber and Lyft summaries only have to back up the income. The free plan covers 40 trips a month.
Frequently asked questions
Why is my Uber or Lyft 1099-K higher than what I was paid?
The 1099-K reports what riders paid, including the platform’s service fee and pass-through charges such as booking fees, airport fees and taxes. Report the gross, then deduct the fees and pass-through amounts shown on your Uber Tax Summary or Lyft Annual Summary.
Can I deduct all the online miles on my Uber or Lyft summary?
Not automatically. Online miles usually include the drive from home to your first pickup area if you went online at home, which is commuting, and any personal stops made while online. They also miss offline repositioning. Use them to cross-check a dated log of your own.
I drive for both Uber and Lyft. Do I add the two mileage totals?
No. When both apps were online, the same road appears in both totals. Keep one log for the car and count each mile once. Income from both platforms goes on the same Schedule C.
Where do I find my Lyft 1099 and Annual Summary?
In the Lyft Driver Dashboard under Tax Center, then Documents, by January 31. Every driver with earnings gets an Annual Summary. Whether you get a 1099-K or 1099-NEC depends on the thresholds, and income is reportable either way.
Related: delivery driver taxes hub (shared rules and the delivery-platform table), Uber Eats taxes for couriers on the same Uber account, rideshare deductions, and what an IRS mileage log needs.
Published September 30, 2026. General tax education for U.S. federal Schedule C filers, not tax advice. Platform form and summary details were checked against Uber’s and Lyft’s driver tax pages on September 30, 2026 and can change; read the documents you actually receive. Figures in the example are illustrations, not a promised deduction. Uber and Lyft are trademarks of their owners. Tax Miles (App Store id 6758579463) is not affiliated with Uber, Lyft, or the IRS.