In response to COVID-19, the Workers Lab and Steady developed the "Income Passport" to streamline gig workers' unemployment benefit applications by pulling income data directly from gig platforms and financial accounts. This tool reduced manual verification time, helped prevent fraud, and improved workers' access to full benefits, with successful tests in Alabama and Louisiana demonstrating significant time savings and improved service delivery.
This issue brief explores how states can leverage existing policy to better support self-employed workers. The Simplified Self-Employment Deduction option available to state SNAP programs is a key example of one such supportive policy. This brief discusses the advantages of this policy option, and highlights the experiences of officials in Alabama, Maryland, Nebraska, and South Carolina, in addition to offering a roadmap for other states.
