Hacker News Reader

Comment by rzimmerman | Hacker News Reader

To make it a fair comparison to full-time or even part-time work as an employee, I think you'd need to take into account the cost of car insurance, health insurance, having a car, car maintenance, gas, a smart phone + plan, time spent getting inspected, and other overhead. It's probably closer to ~$15/hr after all of that. I wouldn't be surprised if they derived $21 as California minimum wage + costs of driving.

View on HN

I mean, its also essentially tax free money as you get a ~.50$ tax relief/mile driven, so IMO with all the costs you probably are equivalent or possibly better than a 21/hour job.

Below ~$45k/yr, the actual income tax rate paid is zero or negative after filing for a return. These are the 47% of Americans that Mitt Romney correctly described as paying no income tax.

A $21/hr tax-free job minus driving costs is still equivalent to a $15/hr job. It's definitely not equivalent to a $21/hr job riding around in someone else's ambulance burning someone else's gas. And from what I'm seeing, residents make ~$60k/yr. That job is also a stepping stone to a much more lucrative profession.

I have made $20k/year when I was in grad school and I definitely paid income tax. 18-20% overall IIRC.

Taxi drivers don't work 100+ hour work weeks with 24 hour shifts or have to pay malpractice insurance.

Mitt Romney talking about only income tax is intentionally myopic. What's their total tax burden including payroll taxes?

Below ~$45k/yr, the actual income tax rate paid is zero or negative after filing for a return. These are the 47% of Americans that Mitt Romney correctly described as paying no income tax.

That’s only if you believe in the fairy tale that Social Security and Medicare taxes (close to 15% including the employer’s side) go into a separate account and that those taxes don’t go into the same bucket as regular tax revenues.

But you also have to pay both sides of the payroll tax, I'd be surprised to learn that this ends up being true.

The tax "relief" you state is because it's an actual expense. It costs, on average, $0.58 per mile to operate a vehicle. If you're earning the equivalent of a full time wage at Uber, you're driving 30-50k miles per year and incurring that expense on those miles. It's not some magic money that you just get to use as the basis of a deduction.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com