New gig workers, know how to file

Many perks, but cover all the bases

If you became a gig worker during the pandemic, beware: Your taxes just got more complicated.

Gig work — Uber driving, Instacart shopping, Amazon Flex delivery — is on-demand, freelance work that’s typically taxed as self-employment. Instead of having an employer withhold money from your paycheck, you’re an independent contractor who is expected to pay taxes on your gig income as you earn it. You’ll also owe a larger share of your pay to Social Security and Medicare taxes.

On the plus side, you may have more opportunities to deduct expenses and save for retirement thanas a W-2 employee.

Self-employment taxes

About half of U.S. adults say they don’t have a good understanding of the tax implications of freelance or gig work, according to a recent Nerdwallet survey. Yet this type of work was a growing part of the U.S. economy even before the pandemic upended people’s work lives.

A survey last summer by Upwork, a freelance job platform, found 59 million Americans — or 36 percent of the U.S. labor force — had freelanced in the previous 12 months. But COVID -19 lockdowns led to big changes in the composition of the freelance fleet.

Gig work tax basics

Regular employees get W-2s in January from their employers showing how much they earned the previous year and how much was withheld in taxes. The self-employed, by contrast, may get tax forms known as 1099s showing how much a company paid them. Even if you don’t get a 1099, though, you’re expected to file a tax return and report all your self-employment income if your net earnings are $400 or more. Net earnings is basically the income you earn from your self-employment minus allowed deductions.

You may be required to send out 1099s if you paid $600 or more to any person or company as part of your business. The deadline to file those was Feb. 1.

You’re also going to owe self-employment tax. Employees typically pay 6.2 percent of their income in Social Security taxes and 1.45 percent in Medicare taxes, while their employers pay an equal amount.

But if you’re your own employer, you typically pay both halves of those taxes: 12.4 percent to Social Security and 2.9 percent to Medicare, for a total of 15.3 percent.

What you can deduct

Internet, phone service, transportation, health insurance, a home office — all these and more are potentially deductible, at least in part, if they are “ordinary and necessary” parts of running your business.