I'd estimate in NYC that 90% of deliveries I get are made by bicycle, so their average expenses are comparatively very low.

Though the significant risk to life and limb from working on a bicycle has to be accounted for.

What is the hourly rate for bicycle couriers in NYC? They are frequently used in the legal and real estate industry to quickly move physical documents between offices.

I’ve even had Uber eats deliveries from places close-by where it said “X is walking”.

The delivery vehicles being used in NYC are almost entirely e-bikes, so the expense is not as big as you might be thinking. It's certainly nothing close to the cost to gig workers for running an Uber car.

So does it include health and sick pay for when you get injured or older and you’re less mobile? Cycling all the time could be way more taxing than driving.

Of course it doesn't include any of that. It's "independent contracting".

Though keep in mind they're throttle e-bikes, so there isn't a lot of actual pedaling going on. And as far as accumulated workplace injuries go, merely riding a bike is pretty easy compared to a lot of blue collar work. No, I think what'd get you here is the crashes.

I wouldn’t discount the long term health costs of breathing exhaust fumes all day either. Even as a recreational cyclist or occasional commuter in NYC I noticed it.

Tbh... It's likely still has a better balance then your average office job where you are sitting all day every day.

Sitting in a chair in a metal box is definitely worse for health than cycling all day

Than (e-)biking on roads alongside metal boxes? This ain’t biking through the woods. Just think about the pollution and chance of getting hit.

How often are people on e bikes getting mowed down where you live? What kind of hellscape do you live in where cycling causes you to ingest more polluted air than sitting in your bioweapon-proof, hermetically-sealed, fart-fermenting 3000 kilo Tesla? Sheesh

Are you joking that everywhere is a hellscape, or did you make a typo, or what?

Because anywhere that has any air pollution, you'll ingest more when you're breathing harder and have no air filter.

I’m kinda joking, but I genuinely feel bad for people who live in places where cycling makes their health worse because of the air pollution. I had to deal with that situation a few summers ago when wildfires caused ash to rain from the sky and made the air quality shit. It felt like a low-level hell.

I'm not sure if you noticed that the GP wrote "e-bike". Yes, even riding a e-bike would be more taxing than driving for many, I would say that an e-bike is much less taxing than a regular bicycle.

The act of cycling shouldn't be any sort of problem. The accidents though are another story. The e-bikes are as silent as regular bikes but much faster.

I door dash mainly in Queens & sometimes in Manhattan using an electric scooter. I have not had any extra expense so far. 80% of the time I charge my scooter at work or at the gym so I'm not really paying extra on my electricity bill lol. Also, I stick to following traffic rules and stay on the bike lane as much as possible for safety reasons. If I see a large truck coming through, and it is a narrow street, I get on the side walk and let the truck pass. It has been easy accumulating active time, especially when dashing in Manhattan. So far, I have had a good experience and it has been an easy $30+ hourly.

Can they not offset these expenses against their tax? If you’re running a business out of your vehicle, the cost of operating that vehicle is the cost of running the business which should be treated like that by the tax code.

The marginal federal tax rate for someone making $50,000 is 12%. So every dollar spent on gas (or whatever other deductible expenses) would lower federal taxes by 12 cents.

But I'd be surprised if many drivers grossed more than $50K/year. If they earn less, the tax benefit of deductibility is even smaller.

Personal income tax and the tax treatment of businesses are different - as a business, you’d earn some revenue from doordash while showing some expense (like gas, insurance premiums, and your salary). Your company would then pay tax on the net and you’d pay tax on the salary you give yourself from your company.

Not a CPA so I’m pretty sure I’m oversimplifying this and there are lower bounds I don’t know about which prevent most gig workers from operating like this.

I think we're in agreement, because I'm assuming serious DoorDash drivers file Schedule C, which is the practical equivalent of dividing your life into personal and business sections but without the paperwork (or benefit) of incorporating.

My comment was motivated by OP's question asking whether it was possible to "offset these expenses against their tax" (emphasis added). No, it's not possible to offset an expense against tax. It's only possible to offset against income. I frequently see people on HN saying things like "it doesn't matter if it's a ripoff because it's a tax writeoff!!!" If they actually look at their tax returns, they are surprised that an expensed dollar saves them only 10-20 cents, so the price definitely does matter.

Tax credits, on the other hand, are a lot closer to what people are usually thinking of when they say tax expense. If you install residential solar in the US in 2023, for example, you get a 30% tax credit. That means if you spend $10,000, your federal tax bill goes down by $3,000. If it were merely 30% deductible, then you'd subtract $3,000 from your income, which at a Doordash driver's tax bracket would reduce taxes by only about $350.

(I'm not a CPA, either, as any CPA can surely tell.)