The other part of this is that Doordash workers need to pay for their own delivery vehicles (gas, upkeep etc.) which factors into the actual wages they get. They are not making significantly more than minimum wage workers.
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.
Because anywhere that has any air pollution, you'll ingest more when you're breathing harder and have no air filter.
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.
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.
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.)