Document missed income and work effects

By Jacob Alford

What proves lost wages?

Connect the work you missed to the injury and then connect the claimed amount to reliable pay records. Keep the dates and hours, the usual rate, scheduled shifts, work restrictions, and the pay you actually received. Obtain an employer confirmation that explains the records rather than merely repeating your requested total.

Preserve pay stubs before and after the wreck, time sheets, tax records, schedules, and messages about missed work. Separate full-day absences, reduced hours, appointment time, overtime, and paid leave. If another reason also reduced your hours, identify it.

A simple worksheet should let someone trace each line to a source. Gross paycheck figures may not be the final legal measure: Texas has an income-tax-reduction proof rule for covered earnings and earning-capacity claims. Keep the underlying figures so the calculation can be reviewed correctly. PIP wage benefits have a separate policy/statutory calculation.

Source: Texas CPRC §18.091.

What if I used paid leave?

Do not assume an unchanged paycheck means there was no work-related loss. Injury-related time charged against accumulated sick leave may still matter. Preserve the leave balances before and after, the employer’s leave policy, pay records, and the reason the injury kept you from working.

Identify the actual benefit: accumulated sick leave, vacation, a combined PTO bank, unlimited leave, wage continuation, or disability payments. They are not interchangeable. Ask whether the time could otherwise have been used, carried forward, or paid out and whether the employer restored it.

Texas cases recognizing accumulated-sick-leave loss do not establish that every modern PTO arrangement has the same value. Record the facts instead of claiming both a full unpaid wage loss and the same paid hours as a second loss. The treatment of independent benefits and the legal measure require careful review.

Source: Hyde-Way v. Davis, court opinion, discussion of accumulated sick leave.

How do I document self-employment income loss?

Show what work you personally could not do and how that affected your earnings. Preserve tax returns, bookkeeping, invoices, deposits, contracts, calendars, canceled jobs, and medical work restrictions. Explain the calculation in ordinary language, with records behind it.

Compare an appropriate pre-wreck period with the affected period and account for seasonality, business growth, price changes, staffing, and unrelated slowdowns. Identify work permanently lost versus work delayed and later completed. Show what a substitute worker did and what you paid.

Business receipts are not automatically your personal lost earnings. Revenue can reflect materials, employees, equipment, and capital as well as your labor. A persuasive explanation helps someone understand the numbers; it does not replace them. Ask a bookkeeper or accountant to reconcile a complicated record rather than choosing the largest sales figure as the claim.

Source: Strauss v. Continental Airlines, official opinion.

What if I can work fewer hours or cannot do my old job?

Record the specific limitation and the actual work change. Keep the clinician’s restrictions, job description, reduced schedule, reassignment, wage change, and attempts at modified duties. Explain whether the difficulty is lifting, driving, concentration, standing, repetitive movement, or another task.

Ask the clinician to address the job’s real demands rather than requesting a vague “off work” note when more useful detail is possible. Update restrictions as recovery changes. Keep records of a successful return as well as a failed attempt.

Past reduced earnings and future reduced earning ability are related but different questions. A temporary schedule change does not prove permanent disability. Conversely, returning to work does not necessarily show that all limitations have disappeared. Use future needs and family help for long-term capacity. If the collision also arose from work, identify any workplace-benefit claim separately.

Sources: DOL medical certification guidance; Strauss earning-capacity analysis.

Which disability or work benefits should I identify separately?

List each possible benefit and its administrator: paid leave, employer wage continuation, short- or long-term disability, workers’ compensation where applicable, Social Security disability, and PIP wage benefits. Ask for the policy or plan terms, application deadline, medical proof, waiting period, and any offset or repayment provision.

Do not label all money received during recovery “wages.” Record the dates, gross amount, deductions, and source of each payment. Eligibility for one program does not establish eligibility for another, and the programs may define disability differently.

Apply through the appropriate process without assuming the auto claim replaces it. If a program asks about other benefits or settlements, answer accurately. Discuss a proposed settlement’s effect on means-tested or reimbursement-sensitive benefits before signing. Keep auto benefits, workplace benefits and reimbursement requests separate.

Sources: DOL disability-benefit claims; TDI auto benefits.

How do variable hours, tips, commissions or seasonal work change the records I need?

Use a representative record rather than your best week. Preserve enough history to explain normal fluctuations, together with schedules, tip reports, commission agreements, sales records, and actual deposits. Compare like seasons when the work is seasonal.

For expected overtime, show the scheduled or usual opportunity and whether you likely would have worked it. For commissions, distinguish a sale already earned from a hoped-for future sale, and explain when payment normally arrives. For tips, use contemporaneous records and reported income rather than reconstructing a convenient total later.

Identify cancellations and replacement shifts, including work you made up. If the business was growing or your role had just changed, preserve the agreement and other evidence explaining why earlier pay is an imperfect comparison. A transparent calculation with stated assumptions is more useful than false precision.

Sources: Texas earnings proof rule; Strauss on supported earning-capacity proof.

What if I was between jobs, retired, a student or doing unpaid household work?

Document what changed even if there is no missing paycheck. Depending on the facts, relevant losses may involve earning ability, interrupted education, household services, or other daily limitations. They should not be forced into a fictitious hourly wage claim.

If you were between jobs, keep applications, offers, start dates, work history, and the restrictions affecting available work. If you were a student, preserve enrollment, attendance, accommodations, withdrawals, and documented plans. If retired, distinguish lost paid work you actually planned or performed from lost household activity or enjoyment.

For unpaid household work, list the tasks you previously did, what changed, and who now performs them. Save actual replacement costs. Whether these facts support a recoverable category and amount requires legal review. Lack of a paycheck does not make the effect on your life unimportant.

Sources: Strauss, earnings and earning-capacity proof; Texas CPRC §18.091.

How do business revenue, avoided expenses and actual lost income differ?

Revenue is what the business brings in before expenses. Personal earnings and business profit require a closer calculation. If a job was canceled, costs you did not have to incur can affect the economic loss.

Jacob Alford’s hypothetical at InjuredTexan.com starts with a $2,000 canceled job and $700 in materials never purchased. Those figures do not establish a $2,000 personal wage loss. You would still need to examine other saved costs, the value of your own work, whether the job was later completed, and any replacement income. That illustration is a recordkeeping prompt, not a formula for every business.

Separate fixed costs you continued paying from variable costs avoided because the work was not done. Identify the business entity, other owners, employees, and who actually suffered the loss. A company’s claim and an owner’s injury claim are not automatically the same. Do not add gross lost sales, net lost income, and replacement labor without checking for overlap.

Source: Strauss v. Continental Airlines.

What should I ask about leave, work restrictions, accommodation and returning to work?

Ask the employer what leave and benefit processes apply and ask the clinician what you can safely do. Give each the information needed for its role. An employer decides workplace arrangements; a clinician supplies medical restrictions and functional information.

Ask about application forms, certification deadlines, intermittent leave for appointments, temporary duties, reduced hours, and any return-to-work certification. Eligible employees of covered employers may have FMLA rights; disability-accommodation rules may also apply. Neither protection applies identically to every worker or every injury.

Keep requests and responses. If an offered duty conflicts with your restrictions, ask for clarification rather than silently declining or pushing through unsafe work. Report changes and arrange reassessment when appropriate. A dispute about leave, discrimination, or accommodation can have its own deadlines, separate from the wreck claim, and may need employment-specific help.

Sources: DOL FMLA medical certification; EEOC disability accommodation guidance.

How do I document replacement labor, rescheduled jobs and income from several kinds of work?

Use a separate line for each job or income source and record what actually happened. Include the original booking, work you could not perform, replacement worker, amount paid, rescheduled date, eventual payment, and any refund to the customer.

Keep payroll, contractor invoices, customer messages, calendars, and bank records. Explain whether the substitute preserved the revenue but increased your costs, or whether the job was lost entirely. A rescheduled job paid later can create a different loss from a permanent cancellation.

For mixed work, separate wages, freelance work, rideshare or delivery income, and business distributions. Then reconcile the whole picture so the same hours or revenue are not counted twice. Keep the explanation readable: what you would have done, why you could not do it, who did it instead, and the supported financial difference. Put estimates in a clearly labeled column rather than presenting them as completed transactions.

Source: Strauss, distinguishing business performance from personal earning loss.

Attorney reviewed by Jacob Alford · November 11, 2026