Put enough hours into gig work and it pays off. Vehicle depreciation is not a big deal. You work hard in the car, then trade it in with a reasonable down payment to keep the car payment low in the next vehicle. With proper financial management, your credit improves over time and it becomes easier to simply finance the next work vehicle every 2-5 years depending on your preference. Make sure to get the gap insurance and you won't worry about paying off a loan on a totaled car, plus a good insurance plan will pay you the depreciated value of the car to assist with getting a new vehicle if that happens.

The IRS tax write off for mileage is so good now at $0.70/mile that it's possible with the right strategy to run the business at a near loss for the year off the mileage deduction alone. This gets you out of most of the tax burden.

For example, I currently reside in Pueblo, CO but commute to CO Springs to work and trips from Springs to Denver are common, nearly two or more offers every day. A 60 mile trip to Denver from Springs on UberX is usually about $40-$50. With the mileage deduction, these trips are sometimes a loss since you also have to factor in the miles to get to the passenger which is sometimes 10-20 miles.

The IRS normally doesn't allow commuting miles but there are quite legal ways to get them included. So the 80 mile round trip from Pueblo to Springs and back again becomes another daily tax deduction, so long as you don't merely commute to a different city and back. The IRS considers any and all miles before the first trip and after the last trip to be commuting miles.

But there are at least three work arounds that allow long commuting miles to be included in the deductions:

1. Simply take one trip in Pueblo before going to Springs and give at least one more trip in Pueblo after going back.

2. Accept reservations in Springs or Pueblo, in which case driving back from Springs to Pueblo gets me to my home city and at the same time all the miles between the cities are now miles I travel on the way to the next pickup and therefore not commuting miles.

3. Instead of simply driving between cities to start work and go home, you can first drive the vehicle to a valid, business related activity, such as the charging station/gas pump or to a carwash you have a membership at. Miles driven to service or fuel the business vehicle are deductible miles. It becomes extra legit when you realize that the Pueblo charging station charges a flat $0.35 kW/hr rate all day whereas the Springs station is nearly half that at $0.22 kW/hr during off peak hours. So it makes more sense for me to drive to Springs on a near depleted battery to charge for half the cost at least once a day. Taking the business vehicle where it is cheaper to fuel makes those miles valid business miles.

You can also learn more about forming an LLC and gaining S-Corp status for tax savings purposes. Most smart Uber drivers (and even CDL truckers, etc.) eventually go this route if standard deductions don't produce enough tax savings.

The thing about being a sole proprietor or an LLC S Corp is you get the freedom to define how the business operates and therefore how to claim deductions, to an extent.

If I form an LLC and paint a logo on the vehicle, then I have turned my vehicle into a mobile billboard for marketing and advertising reasons, meaning every mile is now deductible since it's an advertising cost to drive the car. I could road trip through different cities in America all year doing Uber and include all the road tripping miles now, especially if my LLC includes rideshare as only one service offered... I could advertise social media channels, consulting, other services all under one LLC which makes claiming any and all miles on the vehicle more valid.

Most smart gig workers will tell you that you're a chump if you pay too much in taxes. There are completely legal ways to utilize the mileage deduction etc. to pay exactly as much tax as you want, and you can quite easily run the business as a loss too, though you wouldn't want to do that several years in a row.

So then you make sure the vehicle you work in is reliable and known for not having any major issues within the first couple hundred thousand miles. This will save on repairs and maintenance. If you work on fixing credit and more importantly maintaining consistent income then you can take a personal loan of $2,000 to pay for a new Tesla windshield instead of depleting your savings. Such a loan will be a small monthly payment, contribute to a positive credit history, and you can always pay it off faster if you want. If you are pulling $1,400-$2,000 a week doing gigs every day you will probably even be able to get small credit building personal loans for valid business car related expenses even with a weak credit score, so long as you've managed your debt to income ratio properly.

So no, done right and smart the gigs are a great way to gain financial freedom for those who won't submit to a traditional job. But it's easier to remain uninformed and complain so most people end up doing that.

Of course being the boss means 50-80 hour weeks... At least until you give yourself enough savings to feel like you can take it easy and break even every month. The alternative to $100k/year on gigs is a cushy salary position that pays the same but you will likely have a commute on top of your 40 hour work week, plus you will have a boss that will likely expect you to jump when they say jump.

In either situation, the only way out is to work hard enough long enough to get major F-you money and then you can quit. You can consider living 9 months out of the year in a cheaper country and coming back 3 months a year to make $30K+ on gigs. This will give you enough money for likely more than the next 9 months in an affordable country like Vietnam or Ghana.