with current setup, as a 1099 contractor, i get to write off alot of thing, the biggest is the milages at the end of the year. with this write off, i pay very low taxes on the money coming in from Uber. also here lately, i have been putting like 5k/month miles on my car. maintenance, gas, and depreciation are out of pocket (covered by the milage fee).
If things were to change, become an employee (w-2), the pay structure would need to radically change. wold not be able to claim the mileage off on taxes. would need enough per hour to pay the taxes, gas, maintenance, depreciation, extra car insurance, everything. i think the least i have made, on a bad day even wit those factors, was about $10/hr, averaged over the whole day of driving. sure you might hit a bad spurt of 1 bad hour, but that's why you go out and drive, in my case 4-6 hours a night after regular job. Uber would need to own and manage the vehicles, pay for gas, and tell people where to drive to, who to pickup. the expense of buyin lets say a million vehicles, plus maintenance is laughable.