This Week: No More Upfront Pricing? And The New Tax Center

This Week In Rideshare News: All about the new Gig Economy Tax Center, Uber is removing up front pricing in California, and the biggest mistakes passengers make

Hey guys, what’s up? It is Cecily, and it’s this week in rideshare news.

Gig Economy Tax Center

Finally and just in time, the IRS launches the Gig Economy Tax Center, basically to answer all of your gig economy tax questions, guys. Now there are approximately 57 million freelance workers in America. You’re a part of that, too. So these new tax resources are a welcome addition, especially with tax season being around the corner. I didn’t know what to do before I did this, so I figure it’s good that they finally added this. Like it’s been five years. Okay, anyway, let’s be positive.

So the tax center includes tips on business expenses, guys, record keeping, rental income, mileage, stuff like that. They also have a pay portal so that you can pay your quarterly estimated taxes along the way. Of course, they do. But for people like me, we just wait til the end of the year. I’ve added that link to the description. We’ll be going into that a little bit later, and I’m pretty sure that it’ll be a lot of coverage on this channel regarding the topic. Glad to see that the IRS are onboard.

Yes, I’m being petty this week, because there’s a lot of talk about how AB5 is changing rideshare here in California. The part that really irritated me the most was all the coverage of the riders who are truly upset, because they don’t know how much the ride’s going to cost. Well, what about the drivers that don’t know your destination? What about when drivers were paying between 20% or 70% in commission? What about that? Or when they said the tip was in the fare, it’s included in the fare? No one cared. There was no public outcry. Not at all.

Now speaking of fair, different kind of fair, please understand that nothing about rideshare is fair. There’s only a few companies that are making beaucoup money off of all this. Everybody else is just kind of trying to get by. I say that meaning that these companies are profiting heavily off of the convenience of getting these rides and the flexibility and the ability for drivers to use their cars to make this kind of money. So I’m just curious to see how AB5 is going to affect rideshare in general. Uber and Lyft and DoorDash all said that it was going to be horrible things to come, and I’m here for it. I just want to see what’s going to happen next.

Biggest Mistakes Passengers Make

Clark Bowman, Uber driver and writer at the Business Wire, shares his list of what he believes are the biggest mistakes that he sees his passengers making. Requesting a carpool over a regular ride, not price checking both Uber and Lyft before requesting the ride, traveling at the busiest times possible, not checking your pickup location in the app, or having a bad pickup location, not bringing your car seats for your children. Shame on you for that. Not checking for all of your items, your items before you leave the vehicle. Not ordering the right type of ride you need, making a mess and then being charged a cleaning fee, doing things that negatively affect your passenger rating, and not contacting Uber and Lyft support about bad drivers and not rating good drivers fairly. Trust me, those things help.

What do you see?

I don’t know what is going on. He was driving really erratic, and I’m not sure what is happening. He was like currently driving.

I don’t know, but apparently an Uber driver has a medical emergency. It looks like a seizure of some sort. Just watch the video.

Sir, are you okay? Excuse me. Are you okay? Oh, okay. Okay. Are you all right?

Can you believe this? Like I don’t know what medical condition …

Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay? Sir, are you all right?

… causes anyone to do that, but I would have been scared for my life. I really would have. And I probably wouldn’t have asked him so many times how he felt. I probably would’ve just jumped out the car. What are your thoughts?

Now for my favorite segment, what would you do? But in this case it’s how do you feel? I was looking at a forum, and they had this young lady uploaded some feedback she got from a rider. It says, “No help by driver with one suitcase in trunk. We’re an elderly couple, and we had to lift it out to the pavement.” So she wrote, “I know exactly who this was. No, they were not elderly. Is it our job to do luggage?”

I’m just waiting for you to formulate your answer. I’ve got one. No, it’s not your job to lift anything. You do that out the goodness of your heart if you make that choice, if you want to. There are certainly times where people are not able to do it, and so to watch them struggle takes time. It might be irritating to even experience, or you might feel like it was the polite thing to do. This is a woman, and so culturally, some people may feel like if there was a man that was there, that the man should have done it, and that by reaching for the man’s suitcase might’ve been, I don’t know, disrespectful maybe. I don’t know.

But my answer is no. Let me know what your answer is and if you’ve ever had a situation where someone went off on you or gave you a bad review because you didn’t help them with their luggage or anything else that belongs to them that they’re lugging around in the universe. Let me know.

If you like this video, give me a thumbs up. If you are watching, breathing, still alive in 2020, you can give me a thumbs up, too. Your engagement is important and valued. If you’re not subscribed, please subscribe. We’d love to see you again. I’m here every single Saturday morning, so you got to subscribe so you can see that. If you don’t know who I am or what I do, my name is Cecily. I have a channel called Drive Girl Drive, create videos over there on YouTube. You can also find me on Facebook. It’s a really great way to message me directly, because it’s kind of hard to see all the comments on my YouTube channel. So that’s why I tell people to go there. And sometimes I do lives on Facebook, which is completely different than what I do on YouTube. So yeah, check it out.

I’m going to log off myself. I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful, and fruitful weekend. Be safe, and please don’t end up in the news. This week was really hard trying to find some positive stuff, guys. It’s getting rough out there. Because I don’t think my audience is the audience that I see in the news. I don’t think you guys even could relate to these guys and girls. It’s just a lot of BS out there, and I’m just glad that that’s not my demographic. Bye.