Know Your True Take-Home Pay.

In the United States, the IRS generally allows self-employed rideshare and delivery drivers to deduct mileage for the entire period they are logged into the app and available to accept work, not only the miles driven with a passenger or delivery in the vehicle. This is often called "online mileage." Purely personal commuting to your first login location is typically not deductible. In Canada, the CRA applies a similar principle: kilometres driven for the purpose of earning business income, including time spent waiting for a fare while logged into a platform, can generally count toward your business-use percentage. Because platform tracking varies, keep your own mileage log (start/end odometer, dates, and app-online status) and confirm treatment of waiting-time miles with a qualified tax preparer.

Most US tax professionals suggest independent contractors reserve approximately 25% to 30% of net (post-expense) profit to cover federal self-employment tax (15.3% on net earnings, subject to the Social Security wage base) plus federal and state income tax, then pay it quarterly using IRS Form 1040-ES. Canadian self-employed drivers typically reserve a comparable share for combined federal and provincial income tax plus CPP contributions, remitted through CRA instalment payments if net tax owing exceeds the CRA threshold in the current and either of the two prior years. These are general planning ranges, not personalized tax advice, since actual liability depends on your total income, deductions, province or state, and filing status, so verify your figure with a tax professional or the official IRS/CRA calculators.

It depends on your vehicle costs. The standard mileage method (a flat rate per mile or kilometre) is simpler and tends to favor drivers with newer, fuel-efficient, lower-maintenance vehicles, since it bundles depreciation, fuel, insurance, and repairs into one rate. The actual expense method can produce a larger deduction for drivers with high fuel consumption, expensive repairs, financing interest, or steep depreciation, but it requires detailed receipts and, in the US, restricts your ability to switch methods in later years for that vehicle. Many drivers run both calculations for their specific numbers each tax year and choose whichever produces the larger deduction, then confirm the choice with a tax professional before filing.

Yes. Selecting the Global region gives you a currency picker covering more than 150 world currencies plus a metric or imperial units toggle, so the fuel, distance, and payout fields always match how you actually track your numbers. RealWage doesn't have researched tax-rate or standard-mileage-deduction data for every country the way it does for the IRS and CRA, so outside the US and Canada the tax reserve, mileage-allowance rate, and vehicle maintenance rate all start at zero and are yours to fill in: enter your own local self-employment tax rate and per-distance rates if you want the reserve estimate to reflect your country's rules, or leave them blank to see your take-home pay after vehicle costs alone.

Most driver apps advertise an hourly or per-trip rate calculated only against "engaged" time (the minutes you're actively on a trip or delivery) and before any of your own costs are subtracted. RealWage's Real Net Hourly Wage instead divides your true take-home pay (after fuel, a maintenance reserve, and an estimated tax set-aside) by every hour you were on-shift and available for work, including time spent waiting between offers. Both numbers are "correct" for what they measure; they're just measuring different things, and the gap between them is usually the clearest signal of whether a shift, zone, or platform is actually worth your time.

Yes, and it's one of the more useful ways to use the calculator if you multi-app. Run the same shift's numbers through separately for each platform (or compare a typical week on each), keeping your fuel price, fuel efficiency, and maintenance rate identical across the comparisons so the only thing actually varying is what each app paid you and how many hours it took. A platform with a higher advertised per-trip rate can still come out lower on Real Net Hourly Wage than one with smaller payouts but shorter waits between offers, and that gap is usually invisible until you calculate it directly.

There's no single standard answer here, and it depends what you're trying to learn. If you want each app's individual Real Net Hourly Wage, count only the hours you were actively logged into that specific app, even during periods you were also logged into others; this can mean the same wall-clock hour gets counted toward more than one app's total, which is intentional, not a bug. If you instead want your true combined take-home wage for a multi-app shift, run one calculation using your total combined payout from every app against your total wall-clock hours worked, counted once. Both are legitimate questions; they just answer different things.

Yes. Both the IRS standard mileage rate and the CRA's per-kilometre allowance are built as a bundled rate meant to cover depreciation (or lease cost), fuel, maintenance and repairs, tires, and insurance in a single per-distance figure; you're not meant to separately deduct depreciation or insurance premiums on top of it. That's also exactly why RealWage's Vehicle Overhead figure and Tax Allowance figure are calculated separately: the maintenance-rate overhead is a real, out-of-pocket planning cost, while the tax allowance is the separate IRS/CRA figure that reduces your taxable profit at filing time. If your actual vehicle costs (financing, insurance, repairs) run meaningfully above or below the bundled rate for your specific vehicle, the actual-expense method covered in the FAQ above may reflect your real costs more accurately, so run both and compare.

No, and it isn't meant to be. Use it to see your real net hourly wage quickly, decide whether a shift, zone, or platform is worth it, and get a reasonable ballpark for how much to set aside for taxes as you earn, so you're not caught short at filing time. It uses simplified, current-year-approximate tax and mileage figures, doesn't know your full financial picture (other income, filing status, deductions outside of driving), and isn't a substitute for the actual IRS or CRA forms, official calculators, or a licensed tax professional when it's time to actually file.

Yes. Choose "Salary or Wages" in the Income Type selector at the top of the calculator, pick Weekly or Monthly Pay Frequency, and enter your gross salary and hours worked. RealWage then estimates two employee-specific deductions instead of the gig model's vehicle and mileage figures: an employee payroll-tax reserve (FICA, Social Security plus Medicare, for the US; CPP plus EI for Canada) and an income-tax reserve using a simplified blended federal-plus-state/provincial rate, since a W-2 or T4 employee only pays the employee half of payroll tax, not the full self-employment share a gig worker reserves. The result is your real net hourly wage and an effective tax rate, calculated the same transparent way as gig mode, just matched to a salaried worker's actual tax reality. As with gig mode, this is a planning estimate, not tax advice.

Yes. Hourly and freelance work, such as caregiving, tutoring, pet sitting, or short-term contract jobs, generally uses the same self-employment-style model as Gig Driving, since most hourly and freelance workers are responsible for their own tax withholding the way a gig driver is. Choose "Hourly & Freelance" as your Income Type on the calculator, or as your Work Type in the Shift Log, to remove the vehicle, fuel, and mileage fields and enter just your payout, hours, and (in the Shift Log) income source. The tax reserve uses the same self-employment tax logic as Gig Driving, since freelance and contract income is typically taxed the same way in the US and Canada. This is a planning estimate, not tax advice.

No. The Paycheck Splitter is a visual estimate only: it takes the same Tax Reserve, Vehicle Overhead, and Take-Home Profit figures already calculated above it and shows them as a proportional bar instead of separate tiles, so the split is obvious at a glance. RealWage has no bank connection, cannot move, hold, or set aside any money on your behalf, and never sees your actual bank balance. Moving your own Tax Reserve amount into a separate savings account, envelope, or however you prefer to set money aside is still something you do yourself, on your own schedule.

No, and it's worth being upfront about why: RealWage runs entirely in your browser with no app-store app and no server, and true background location tracking, meaning your phone logging trips while it's locked or RealWage isn't open, is something only a native iOS or Android app is allowed to do. A website can't do it, so any tool claiming automatic background mileage capture from a browser tab isn't being fully honest about how it works. Instead, each Gig Driving shift in the Shift Log has fields for Total Distance, Dead Miles (waiting or repositioning with no fare), Commute Miles (home to your first log-in and back), and Parking & Tolls, all optional and entered by you. The "Mileage Log (CSV)" button on the Shift Log tab then exports everything you've logged into one spreadsheet-ready file for your accountant or tax software. Commute-mile deductibility depends on your own situation, so that column is exported separately and this isn't tax advice; check with a tax professional or the IRS/CRA before filing.