Can I be Compensated for Lost Income if I’m Self-Employed?

If you sustain an injury caused by the careless or negligent actions of another individual, you should be able to recover various types of compensation. For an injury case, this typically means recovery of medical bills, property damage expenses, and lost wages. However, what happens if you are self-employed? Can you still recover compensation for lost income?

Self-employed individuals in Kentucky should be able to recover compensation for lost income after sustaining an injury caused by someone else. Here, we want to discuss how self-employment income is proven and calculated in these particular cases.

Self-Employed Still Means Employed

A few decades ago, when someone said they were self-employed, this may have been looked down on. However, times have changed. The “gig economy” has been on the rise for more than a decade, and the COVID-19 pandemic put a spotlight on self-employment and work-from-home opportunities.

Self-employed individuals are still employed, and they can sustain injuries just like anyone else. When a person sustains an injury, it is not uncommon for them to be unable to work while they are recovering. However, when a self-employed person is injured, they can run into challenges when trying to prove their income for the purposes of recovering compensation through an insurance settlement or a personal injury jury verdict.

For a “traditionally employed” person, they will typically just be able to provide pay stubs from their company to prove their income. However, self-employed individuals do not always have easy access to this type of proof. Some of the types of evidence that can be gathered to prove income for a self-employed individual who has sustained an injury includes the following:

• A few years of annual tax returns
• Bank statements going back a few months to a year
• Profit and loss statements which are typically available through various payment platforms
• Payments through various platforms (PayPal, Venmo, CashApp, Stripe, etc.)

Proving how the Injury Affects Your Work

It will be very important for a self-employed individual to prove how their injury has affected their ability to work. This will include providing medical documentation of the injury as well as a statement from a doctor showing how the injury affects their ability to perform your job.

For example, if you are a freelance writer and rely on your arms and hands to work each day, an injury put your fingers, hands, wrists, or arms could be detrimental to your ability to earn money. You would need to show medical records documenting your injury as well as your continued medical care and recovery process.

No two self-employment injury cases will be exactly alike, and the facts and circumstances will certainly be different from one case to the next.

Working With an Attorney

A skilled Lexington personal injury lawyer is going to be a crucial part of securing compensation for a self-employed individual who sustains an injury. Personal injury cases are challenging to begin with, but when you throw in the added factor of being self-employed, you have to consider how beneficial a skilled advocate will be for your case. An attorney will handle every aspect of your case, including gathering the evidence needed to prove liability as well as working with trusted medical and economic experts who can show your total expected financial losses.