Today we're going to discuss what you need to know to file your Uber and Lyft taxes for tax year 2018. So as ride-chairs drivers, we're independent contractors. So filing our taxes is a little bit more involved than a regular W2 employee, but they are still pretty straightforward and simple for the most part. And every year by the end of January, Uber and Lyft send out tax summaries in 1099s for the prior tax year, detailing how much you earned, what fees were taken out, and how much how many miles you drove. And you can access your prior year tax documents by logging into your dashboard for either company. And for those of you that earned a certain amount and will discuss those amounts for both Uber and Lyft shortly, you will receive 1099s in addition to your tax summary. And here's a look at Uber's tax summary. You can see the driving totals there. You can see the gross earnings, the expenses, fees, and tax, and you can also see the net payout. And here's a look at Lyft's tax summary, very similar. You see the totals, you see the ride total, your online miles. There's a gross earnings section where you see ride payments and non-ride earnings. And there's also an expenses section where you see the platform fees, service fees, and third-party fees. Now as far as 1099s, there are two types. The first type we'll discuss is a 1099K. For both companies, if you earned $20,000 in passenger and or delivery payments and provided at least 200 rides and or deliveries, you will receive a 1099K. And we mentioned deliveries because some of you might have UberEats income. And here's a look at a 1099K from Lyft. And this should be very similar with Uber. You can see for this driver, their gross earnings for 2018 was $90,741. You can also see the number of payment transactions and the amount earned in each month. Now if you made less than $20,000 and didn't give 200 rides, you won't receive a 1099K from Lyft or Uber. But you still need to pay taxes on that income. So you'll want to use the tax summary information to file your taxes. We have heard from some drivers that have met the 20,200 ride requirement, but have not received a 1099K from Uber or Lyft. If this has happened, you may have to go in person to a support center to get those tax documents. Now the other 1099 that you may receive is a 1099 Msc. If you earned $600 or more from either company of promotion, referral, and other payments for the year, you will receive a 1099 Msc. And here's what an Uber 1099 Msc looks like and this will be very similar with Lyft. Basically there's one number you're looking for and that's in box 7 and it's the non-employee compensation. You can see this driver earned $6,069.54. Okay, so now you have all your earning information. Next what you want to do is make sure you have all of your deductions in order. So first, the most important deduction that you have as a ride share driver is the cost to operate your vehicle. And you have two options. You can choose the standard mileage deduction or you can choose a percentage of your actual vehicle expenses. And as we have discussed on the blog, the standard mileage deduction will likely make a lot more financial sense and is much easier to track. And standard mileage deduction is a universal method that the IRS uses to estimate the cost to operate your vehicle, gas, maintenance, all those costs. That is what standard mileage deduction is used to try and estimate those for the year. And the standard mileage rate for 2018 was 54.5 cents per mile. So for example, if you drove 30,000 ride share miles in 2018, your standard mileage deduction would be $16,350. That's a huge deduction. Now you were hopefully tracking your ride share related mileage throughout the year. Either via a mileage tracking app, the one we recommend is stride. And you can actually sign up for stride using our affiliate link and we'll provide this link in the description. You could also track via a spreadsheet or a logbook. But if you didn't track your miles, you can actually use those numbers on your lift and uber summaries, those mileage totals that they have. But going forward, you are going to want to track your miles yourself because those lift and uber summaries are not a good substitute for a proper IRS approved mileage log. And on those summaries, you may actually have duplicate miles, especially if you drive for lift and uber at the same time. Those are all your online miles. And those summaries may not have all eligible business miles that you drove for the year. Again, just going forward, you want to track that your mileage, yourself personally as meticulously as possible in order to maximize the mileage deduction for the year. So again, the standard mileage deduction is going to be your most important deduction. But what are some other deductions? Maybe you purchased some training materials and tools like maximum ride sharing profits, which is our video course, the ride share guide, which is our book. Maybe you use the app MyStro. All of those are deductible expenses. And all so other expenses like cell phone use, maybe you provide candy or water for your passengers. Maybe you have a Spotify membership that you use, any Bluetooth devices that you purchased, trunk organizers, all of that may be deductible. And for the cell phone expense in particular, you're going to want to make sure that you claim the percentage that you used your cell phone for ride share. So say 50% of the time you're using your cell phone for personal use and 50% of the time for ride share, you're only going to claim 50% of the cost for the year on your taxes. Now you have all the necessary information, so you're ready to file. You have a few options for filing, but the most popular option is to file your taxes yourself via an online tax service. And the online service that we recommend is TurboTax. I have personally been using TurboTax for five years for filing my ride share taxes. It works fantastic. We absolutely recommend it. And since Uber and Lyft drivers have 1099 income, you'll need to go with TurboTax self-employed. And the cool thing about that is both Lyft and Uber have partnered with TurboTax. So if you use their referral links, you can get TurboTax self-employed for free. TurboTax just does a great job of asking the right questions and providing all the necessary information so you can get your taxes done as smoothly and easily as possible. Let us know if you have any other tax questions in the comments below and good luck filing. Thanks again for watching. Please like, comment, or subscribe and drive safe. Thanks.