What Rover actually reports to the IRS
Service fees, gross bookings, and which number belongs on your return.
Works with: Rover
You booked eleven walks today. The app says you earned $330. After the platform's cut you'll see about $264, and after taxes you'll keep meaningfully less than that — unless you spent the year tracking the things that legally reduce what you owe. Most walkers don't, and it costs them four figures.
Pet care has an unusual tax profile. The individual payments are small enough to feel like pocket money, so people treat them casually. But the volume is high, the driving is constant, and the expenses are real. Add it up across a year and you have a business — one the IRS treats exactly like any other.
Here's what you can claim, what you can't, and what the difference is worth.
You are not taxed on what lands in your bank account. You're taxed on your net profit — gross bookings minus every legitimate business expense.
That distinction matters immediately, because the platform's service fee is one of those expenses. If a client pays $40 through Rover and you receive $32, your income is generally the full $40 with an $8 fee to deduct — not $32 with nothing to explain. Report only the deposit and you've quietly thrown away a deduction while understating your gross.
On that net profit you owe self-employment tax of 15.3%, which covers Social Security and Medicare — both the employee half and the employer half, because you're both. Income tax stacks on top of that at your regular bracket. Nothing is withheld from any of it.
If you read nothing else here, read this. Mileage is the single largest deduction available to most walkers and the single most commonly under-claimed.
The reason is structural. A rideshare driver takes one long continuous trip and the app logs it. You take six short hops between clients across a neighborhood, none of which feel like "driving for work." Three miles to the first dog, two to the next, four across town for the afternoon block. Nobody writes those down. By December they add up to thousands of miles that nobody can substantiate.
The IRS normally sets the standard mileage rate once a year. In 2026 it changed mid-year. The business rate was 72.5 cents per mile from January 1 through June 30, then rose to 76 cents per mile from July 1 through December 31, an unusual adjustment the IRS made citing the rise in fuel costs.
That means a single blended rate applied across your whole year will be wrong. You need your miles split by half of the year. If your tracking app doesn't already do this, it's worth fixing before January — reconstructing a split after the fact is far harder than logging it as you go.
Whatever method you use, the log needs the date, the mileage, and the business purpose. A contemporaneous record — written as it happens — is what makes the deduction defensible. A number estimated in April is not.
Everything you buy to do the work is an ordinary and necessary business expense. Walkers tend to remember the big purchases and forget the constant small ones, which in aggregate are larger.
If you're building out a kit or just starting, Rover publishes sitter resources covering what to carry and how to get set up, and its become-a-sitter guide walks through onboarding, background checks, and setting rates. Keep the receipts from whatever you buy on the way in — startup purchases are deductible too, and the first year is when people are least organized.
One caution on clothing: gear that's suitable for everyday wear generally isn't deductible, even if you only wear it on walks. A branded jacket with your logo qualifies. Plain hiking boots usually don't, however muddy they get.
Platform coverage is not the same as carrying your own. Any liability policy or bond you buy is deductible, and so is the cost of getting credentialed:
Training that maintains or improves skills for a business you already operate is generally deductible. Education that qualifies you for an entirely new line of work generally isn't — a distinction worth raising with a CPA if you're moving from walking into, say, formal training or grooming.
You can't do this job without a phone. Deduct the business-use percentage — if roughly 60% of your usage is bookings, navigation, and client messaging, 60% of the bill is deductible. Pick a defensible percentage and be consistent about it.
The same logic covers scheduling and client-management software, GPS tracking apps clients expect, invoicing tools, and the mileage tracker itself.
If you board dogs at your house, part of your home expenses may become deductible. This is more involved than the standard home office deduction because the space is used differently, and the calculation depends on how much of the home is dedicated and how consistently. It's worth real advice rather than a guess — the deduction can be substantial, and it's also the one most likely to be examined.
Two reporting thresholds moved, and both reduce the paperwork you'll receive:
For a part-time walker, the practical result is that no tax form arrives at all. That is not the same as owing nothing. All income remains reportable whether or not anyone documents it, and if the forms stop coming, your own records become the only evidence of what you earned and what you spent — in both directions.
Once you expect to owe roughly $1,000 or more for the year, the IRS wants payment in four installments rather than one lump sum in April. Miss them and there's an underpayment penalty, even if you eventually pay in full.
The practical habit: set aside a percentage of every payout as it arrives rather than trying to find the money quarterly. Walkers who reserve per booking almost never get caught short. Walkers who reserve per quarter frequently do.
Consider a full-time walker with $42,000 in gross bookings, working roughly five days a week, driving about 9,600 business miles across the year, split evenly between the two mileage-rate periods.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Gross bookings | $42,000 |
| Platform service fee (20%) | −$8,400 |
| Mileage: 4,800 mi at 72.5¢ (Jan–Jun) | −$3,480 |
| Mileage: 4,800 mi at 76¢ (Jul–Dec) | −$3,648 |
| Supplies | −$640 |
| Phone (business share) | −$720 |
| Insurance and bonding | −$384 |
| Scheduling software | −$240 |
| Certification | −$150 |
| Net profit | $24,338 |
| Self-employment tax on that net | $3,439 |
Now run the same year without a mileage log. Net profit rises to $31,466 and self-employment tax rises to $4,446 — about $1,007 more, before income tax. Add federal income tax on that same $7,128 of unclaimed mileage and the real cost of not tracking lands somewhere around $1,900 to $2,600 for the year.
That's the deduction sitting in trips you already drove.
1099Vibe handles bookkeeping, quarterly estimates, and filing for dog walkers and pet sitters — with LLC setup and EIN included. Plans start at $19/month.
See Our PackagesNone of this is complicated. It's just easier to do in January than to reconstruct in April.
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