If your income rises and falls with the seasons, proving lost earnings after an injury is a different beast than it is for someone with a steady nine-to-five paycheck. The insurance adjuster will not simply take your word for it when you say you missed the busy summer harvest or the holiday retail rush. You need hard numbers that show exactly what you would have earned during that specific season, not just what you averaged over the whole year. The burden is on you to connect the dots between your injury and the money that did not come in, and seasonal workers face extra scrutiny because their income patterns look irregular to someone who only understands weekly pay stubs.
Start with your tax returns from the last three years. These are the single most reliable piece of evidence because they show what the IRS accepted as your actual income. If you are a landscaper who makes seventy percent of your annual money between May and September, your tax returns will prove that pattern. The adjuster can see that in each of those three years your highest-earning quarters were the same. But a single year is not enough. You need multiple years to establish that your seasonal spike was not a one-time fluke. If you only have one year of returns, the other side will argue you could have had a bad year anyway, unrelated to the injury.
Next come your bank statements. They show deposits that match your seasonal earnings. If you deposited checks from clients or customers during the same months each year, those deposits create a paper trail that confirms your tax returns. Do not just hand over a stack of statements. Highlight the deposits that correspond to your peak season, and write a simple note on each one explaining which job or client it came from. The insurance company will look for reasons to deny your claim, and sloppy documentation gives them an excuse.
For seasonal workers who are paid in cash, the game changes completely. Cash tips, cash jobs, and under-the-table work do not show up on any official record. If you are trying to claim lost income from cash-based seasonal work, you have an uphill battle. You need contemporaneous records you created at the time, not after the fact. A handwritten log of each day’s earnings, dated and signed by you, is better than nothing. Even better is a running tally of jobs completed, hours worked, and payments received, preferably with a witness who can verify you actually did that work. Smartphone photos of payment envelopes, text messages confirming job bookings, or receipts for supplies you bought for the job all help prove you were active in your seasonal trade.
The specific season you missed matters as much as the money itself. If you were injured in January but your busy season is June through August, you cannot claim lost income for the whole year. You have to prove you missed that exact window. A doctor’s note that says you were unable to work from June 1 to August 31 is essential. But that note needs to specify that your injury prevented you from performing the physical tasks required for your seasonal job, not just that you were “hurt.” A landscaper who broke an ankle cannot mow lawns. A fisherman with a torn rotator cuff cannot haul nets. The medical evidence must match the physical demands of the season.
Employers of seasonal workers often keep records too. If you work for a company that hires you back each season, their payroll records show your prior earnings for that same period. If you are a freelance seasonal worker, like a holiday decorator or a ski instructor, you need to show contracts or bookings you had to cancel because of the injury. Email exchanges with clients saying “I’m sorry, I can’t do that job on December 15 due to my car accident” are gold. They show intent to work and the specific loss.
Finally, consider your year-over-year comparison. If you earned $15,000 in the summer quarter of last year and $0 in the same quarter this year because of your injury, that difference is your lost income. But you must account for other factors. Could a weather event have shut down your season anyway? Did a client cancel for reasons unrelated to your injury? Be honest with yourself, because the adjuster will find out. If you overstate your claim, you lose credibility on every other part of your case.
Seasonal workers often feel the system is stacked against them. It can be, if you do not bring the right evidence. But when you arrive with three years of tax returns, bank statements, a doctor’s note tying your injury to the specific seasonal tasks, and a clear calculation that isolates the lost season, you take away their best argument. You prove that your income was not random. It was predictable. And your injury stole that predictability.
