How we research gig worker taxes

This center is built the same way as the rest of The Consumer Spot's tax education: from the text of the rules, with the limits stated out loud.

How we research this

We read primary text: the statute, the regulation, the public law, and the instructions the agency publishes. Commentary is not evidence, however well written.
There is one axis that changes federal treatment: whether the person is receiving wages as an employee or is carrying on a trade or business. There is no separate class for platform work, so we never invent one.
A form is a fact about a payer. A platform's label is a fact about a contract. Neither is allowed to decide a class in anything we publish.
A reporting threshold is written about reporting. It never appears in a sentence about whether something is income.
Whether an app was switched on is a fact about an app. It can never resolve to business use of a car.
We do not compute an amount for anyone, and we publish no calculator that would appear to.
An unread rule is recorded as unread, never as absent. That distinction is the whole difference between honest coverage and confident guessing.
Where a rule exists only on one side of the class line, we state the condition and stop rather than choosing a side for the reader.
Every page names the authority behind it and the date we read it, so a reader can check us and so we can tell when something has gone stale.

A page about a named platform. No authority we read names a brand, so a brand page would have nothing behind it.
A page for each state. The official text we have read covers a handful of places, and a page per state would imply otherwise.
A determination about any individual reader, in any form, however it is asked for.
A referral, a lead form or a paid placement inside this center.

Every source on this page shows the body that issued it and the date we read it. The federal text behind this center was last read on 2026-08-16.