How to Read Your DoorDash Annual Summary (and What It Leaves Out)
- DoorDash sends three year-end items by January 31: a mileage estimate email, a separate tips-total email (new for tax year 2025), and your 1099-NEC.
- The mileage estimate covers on-delivery miles only - by DoorDash's own description it excludes miles to your zone, between offers, and repositioning.
- Your 1099-NEC now downloads inside the Dasher app, not Stripe Express (which only hosts 2023 and earlier).
- The 1099 figure is gross pay - you are taxed on Schedule C net profit after deductions, not on that number.
- For 2026 payments the 1099-NEC threshold jumps to $2,000, so many part-time Dashers will get no form at all. Your own log becomes the record.
What lands in your inbox by January 31
DoorDash's year-end paperwork arrives as three separate items, and mixing them up is where most confusion starts. Per DoorDash's Dasher tax guide, by January 31 you should have: a mileage estimate email (sent to US and Canada Dashers who were active during the year and dashed by car), a tips total email reporting your 2025 tips separately, and your 1099-NEC if you cleared the reporting threshold. Each answers a different tax question, and none of them is the whole answer.
The mileage estimate: exactly what it covers
DoorDash's help center describes the email as covering "on-delivery mileage" - the driving associated with active deliveries, roughly from accepting an order to completing the dropoff. That phrasing is the whole story: it is an estimate, of one slice of your driving, produced by a platform that only observes you while you are on a delivery.
It is not a tax document, and DoorDash does not present it as one. Treat it the way an auditor would: a third-party estimate that corroborates part of your log, not a log.
The miles that are not in it
When you are working, the IRS standard mileage deduction generally covers more than the delivery itself. The estimate leaves out:
- Driving to your zone before the first offer of the day (though the first leg from home and last leg home are generally nondeductible commuting)
- Between-offer miles - circling, drifting back toward the hotspot, waiting on the next ping
- Repositioning after a far-out dropoff
- Multi-app miles - driving logged while another app's offer is live
How big is the gap? EntreCourier, which has tested this for years, reports DoorDash's estimate came in at least 10% under actual miles every year it checked - and in a 2022 three-week odometer test, DoorDash's tracking captured only 74% of real miles. Gridwise estimates deadhead miles add 30% to 40% on top of what gig apps report. Whatever your personal number is, it is worth up to 76 cents per mile in 2026 (72.5 cents before July 1) - only if it is documented.
The three documents at a glance
| Document | What it shows | What it misses |
|---|---|---|
| Mileage estimate email | Estimated on-delivery miles | To-zone, between-offer, repositioning, multi-app miles |
| Tips total email (new) | Total 2025 tips, broken out for the tips deduction | Nothing - but keep it; you need this figure |
| 1099-NEC (Dasher app) | Gross pay: base + tips + promotions | All your expenses; any sub-threshold income view |
Sources: DoorDash Dasher Guide to Taxes and Stripe Express help, July 2026.
Your 1099 moved: it lives in the Dasher app now
If you are hunting through Stripe Express emails like it is 2023, stop - Stripe's own help page says forms from 2025 are not available in Stripe Express. For tax year 2025, the 1099-NEC downloads inside the Dasher app: tap the earnings pill, then View payout details, then Tax documents, and pick the year. Stripe Express still hosts 2023-and-earlier forms if you opted into e-delivery back then. If the form never shows up, DoorDash support - not Stripe - is the right door to knock on.
The 1099 number is gross - do not pay tax on it directly
The single most expensive misreading of the annual paperwork: treating the 1099-NEC total as your taxable income. It is gross - base pay, tips, and promotions added together, with zero expenses deducted and zero tax withheld. What you owe tax on is your Schedule C net profit: that gross figure minus your mileage deduction, phone costs, hot bags, and other business expenses. A Dasher who grossed $20,000 and logged 12,000 working miles in 2026 deducts about $9,120 in mileage alone before anything else. The full DoorDash tax guide walks the whole return.
The new tips email and why it matters
New with tax year 2025: DoorDash reports your tip income separately and emails your total tips by January 31. That is not bureaucratic noise - it is the paperwork for the qualified tips deduction, which lets tipped workers deduct up to $25,000 a year in voluntary tips through 2028. The IRS final regulations (April 2026) explicitly added app-based delivery people to the qualifying occupation list. To claim it you need tips documented separately from base pay - which is exactly what that email, and your own per-shift records, give you. Income limits apply; a tax professional can confirm your eligibility.
The $2,000 threshold: many Dashers get no form at all
For payments made during 2026, the federal 1099-NEC threshold rises from $600 to $2,000 under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. A Dasher who earns $1,800 next year gets nothing in January 2027 - no form, no estimate of income, nothing to anchor a return. The income is still fully taxable. When no form arrives, your own earnings and mileage records stop being a nice-to-have and become the only documentation of your business that exists.
Make your own records the primary source
IRS Publication 463 describes the standard: adequate records, kept at or near the time of the trip, showing date, mileage, destination, and business purpose. A platform's year-end estimate fails that on two counts - it is neither contemporaneous nor complete. The practical setup is simple: track every working mile yourself as you drive, log what each dash paid with tips separate, and file the DoorDash emails as corroboration. An automatic tracker on your phone does the mileage half without willpower; here is how Dashers set that up.
One rate note for this filing season: tax year 2025 miles use the 2025 rate of 70 cents. Miles you drive in 2026 are worth 72.5 or 76 cents each depending on the trip date when you file next year.
A 20-minute year-end checklist
- Download the 1099-NEC from the Dasher app and check the gross figure against your own earnings log.
- Save both emails - mileage estimate and tips total - as PDFs with your tax records.
- Compare the mileage estimate to your own log. Your log should be higher; if it is lower, you missed trips.
- Total your tips separately for the qualified-tips deduction.
- Reconcile gross to net: 1099 gross minus mileage and expenses is what Schedule C taxes. The DoorDash tax guide covers quarterly payments from there.
More platform paperwork decoded in the Platform Guides hub.
Your log should beat their estimate
GigOdo tracks every working mile automatically, keeps tips separate for the new deduction, and exports tax-ready records - free, with no platform login.
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What does DoorDash send at year end?
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Sources: DoorDash Dasher Guide to Taxes; Stripe Express 1099 guide for DoorDash; How Dasher Pay Works; IRS Publication 463; IRS 2026 mileage rate (Notice 2026-10); IRS final regulations on qualified tips; Littler on OBBBA 1099 thresholds; EntreCourier on DoorDash mileage; Gridwise on unreported deadhead miles. This article is general information, not tax advice.