What counts as gig worker tax deductions? How do mileage deductions work? Why do delivery drivers and other gig workers have to know about the mileage tax deduction? If you have questions like these or think you already have them covered, keep reading. You’ll not only learn why and how to track mileage for taxes, you’ll discover the best app for mileage tracking and how to use it so you keep more of your hard-earned money.
Here's what we cover:
The power of Gridwise for tax management
Being a gig driver means you have more responsibilities than you would if you worked a job where your taxes are withheld for you. Not only do you have to pay your own taxes, you must find smart ways to maximize your deductions and simplify the tax filing process. This sounds rather straightforward, but in truth, you need help.
That’s where Gridwise comes in. Although Gridwise has a mileage tracker, it does much more! Gridwise is designed specifically for gig workers by people who have been gig workers. That’s why the app’s many features cater directly to the needs of rideshare and delivery drivers, as well as all sorts of gig workers across the board.
You’ll find this useful when it comes to managing your tax preparation needs and managing your gig worker tax deductions. Gridwise gives you tools that make it easy to record and compile the information you need to maximize your tax deductions.
- a customizable mileage tracker that records every deductible mile
- income information and analysis for all the driving apps you use
- expense logging
- professional tax software interface to identify gig worker tax deductions
- sleek reports that make tax time a no-stress, no-worry, no-brainer
Gridwise is an extremely powerful app that addresses the needs of gig drivers and can also help you keep track of your other side hustle tax deductions.
A guide to using Gridwise for tax management
Set up mileage tracking
What makes Gridwise such a cool tool for deducting mileage for business? You want to capture every mile you can legally deduct while you’re on your driving gig. The driving apps will indeed tell you how many miles you’ve clocked on the trips you make for them, but they leave a lot of mileage missing from their calculations.
You also need to log the miles you drive on the way to and from your gig and while waiting to get a ping for a ride or delivery. Your apps don’t count that mileage, but Gridwise does! In fact, Gridwise can log your miles automatically as soon as your car starts moving from its parking place.
Setting up automatic tracking is easy. First, you’ll have to download Gridwise and access Gridwise Plus to unlock this feature. Then, follow these simple steps. You can set a specific “idle time,” which tells Gridwise how long to wait before turning off automatic tracking. This makes your mileage tracking life loads easier.
You can also track your miles manually using Gridwise Plus, as well as the free version of Gridwise. Follow these instructions, and you’ll be all set. The manual shift tracker will let you catch all the miles you drive, so make sure you turn it off when you’re done for the day.
If you forget to turn the tracker off, or if you want to add to or adjust the miles you logged automatically, Gridwise makes it simple to edit your mileage figures. You can add mileage manually or make changes to your mileage whenever you need to do so.
With Gridwise, your mileage write-off will be accurate, and you’ll no longer have to worry about how to track mileage for taxes to add to your gig worker tax deductions. Gridwise does it for you!
Note that you can use Gridwise to track miles for all businesses that require the use of your vehicle. Whether you take short business trips or need your car to get from one client to another, Gridwise will help you capture each and every deductible mile.
Sync your earnings with gig apps
When you’re adding up all your gig income, you have choices. You can go through each and every app you drive for, and figure out the totals, or…you can use Gridwise to sync all your apps with your earnings records. Gig workers are busy people, and you can’t afford to spend hours manipulating figures (or missing gig worker tax deductions) and risking major math mistakes.
Streamline the process of adding up your earnings with Gridwise! All you need to do is sync your driving apps with Gridwise, and all your earnings will be recorded and retained. You’ll be able see, at a glance, how much each of the apps you use is earning for you.
Gridwise’s graphs and maps show you the details of your earnings by various factors. This makes it easy to prepare Uber taxes, Lyft taxes, Uber Eats taxes, DoorDash taxes, and taxes for all the apps you use.
You can enter your income figures manually. This and many of the income features are available in the free version, but as a Gridwise Plus driver you’ll enjoy the most number of features when it comes to syncing your apps and analyzing your earnings.
Log your expenses quickly and easily
Tax deduction for mileage isn’t the only delivery or rideshare tax-related item you can use to retain more of your income. Other expenses—from meals and phone costs to the equipment you buy to make your car more efficient for rideshare and delivery—can also be subtracted from your gross income.
You have to do more than take all the receipts you have and throw them in a shoebox so you can rifle through them at tax time. You need a tool with you at all times, one that gives you a place to record each and every expense you encounter. Gridwise is designed to be just that. Enter your expenses with the date and category, save them, and Gridwise will keep them impeccably organized.
Add, edit, or delete expenses using these directions. Later, you can view your total expenses on your earnings reports.
Generate and export tax reports
The real tax time magic happens when you generate and export your information to your or your tax preparer’s software program. From the earnings page, as shown in the screenshot above, simply tap on “Export Tax Reports.”
Gridwise Plus drivers can export their tax reports, which include accounting of all income from their various gigs as well as categorized expenses to .csv or .pdf formats. Free Gridwise app users can also export their information, but in .pdf format only.
Learn more about using Gridwise to generate tax reports and how to export them, so you can start using this convenient feature right away!
How Gridwise works
Advanced tax features for gig workers
You can get tax help with a tap. Keeper is a tax filing app that offers support for all your tax preparation and filing needs with a big discount.
Access to Keeper through Gridwise gives you
- automatic categorization of your tax-deductible expenses
- write-off detection that identifies all your deductible expenses
- tax pros on standby to answer your questions
- tax filing services
Keeper is designed for independent contractors with 1099 income and also handles any W2 or other wage forms you might have. Let Gridwise and Keeper sort out the income from all your gigs and handle all your tax preparation needs. Upload your information, and you’ll never have to agonize over tax time again.
How exactly do Gridwise and Keeper make tax management easier?
Let’s start with tracking your expenses. There are so many purchases and services that are tax deductible. As a gig driver, keeping track of all your expenses, pinpointing which ones can be deducted from your gross income, and making sense of it all can get really complicated. Things get easier when you enter your expenses into Gridwise and let Keeper search your purchases to detect any tax deductible items you might have missed.
Got questions? Get answers. Do you really know how to claim mileage on taxes? Without Gridwise and Keeper, you’re stuck poring over IRS and state tax rules and regulations all by yourself. When you unleash the power of Gridwise and Keeper, you get access to qualified tax professionals to answer all your questions and guide you through the process of preparing to file.
Filing made simple. Once you submit your forms through Keeper’s highly intuitive drag-and-drop interface, a professional will verify your return. You can review a report listing your estimated taxes, your total deduction amounts, and any refunds you might receive from your state and federal returns. A Keeper tax professional will sign off on your returns, and you can keep driving without worrying about whether you got it right.
Source: Keepertax.com
Real-world benefits of using Gridwise for tax management
With Gridwise and Keeper on your side to help you with tax management, you have everything you need to streamline your accounting process and simplify the ordeal of filing your taxes.
Use Gridwise to:
Maximize deductions. Gridwise captures every mile you drive for business. This includes the distances traveled while you’re working but not on the gig app, and when you’re waiting to get a ping. You can also use Gridwise to track mileage for business trips you make for your other side gigs.
Organize your accounting. Use Gridwise to record your expenses, and let Keeper seek out other freelancer tax deductions you might not have considered. Keeper will also categorize your expenses so they can easily be entered on your tax returns.
Streamline the tax filing process. With Gridwise and Keeper, you can take the daunting task of sending tax returns to the authorities off your plate. Recording mileage, earnings, and expenses as you drive along will make it easy to compile the information you need to file. Then, with a Keeper tax expert checking your return over, you can be sure that it’s in compliance and done right.
Save time and reduce errors. All your tax management solutions are on one app when you use Gridwise. You can keep the focus on your job, which is earning more money on your driving gig. Let Gridwise and Keeper handle the rest, and be confident that you’re maximizing your income and holding on to as much of it as possible while remaining in full compliance.
Start organizing your gig business with Gridwise now, and take the responsibility of tracking, recording, and filing off your shoulders so you can sit back, relax, and keep driving.
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