Independent Contractors

Scott,

Hi. I’m a long time fan of your writing, going back to the Thunder rants in the late 90’s. I think I even sent you a horrible recap of Sunday Night Heat once — I cringe to think about what kind of Austin Powers references my 14 year old self might have been using to describe a D’Lo Brown hardcore match.

Anywho, I saw a post on your blog about wrestlers being misclassified as independent contractors and thought I’d chime in. I had a retail job in my youth where I was misclassified as an independent contractor. I didn’t understand the difference then, at least until it came time to file taxes and I ended up owing twice what I expected. 

Thankfully, the IRS (Mike Rotunda joke) does provide recourse for workers in such situations. I had to fill out something called a form SS-8 (https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fss8.pdf) to prove to the federal government that I was in fact, an employee with no autonomy, as opposed to an independent contractor who has significant control over how they perform their own work. I don’t want to bore anyone with tax/employment law jargon, but some of the IRS’s requirements for determining employee status are as follows. You very well might be an employee if:

– If your boss tells you how, when, and where to work
– If your boss tells you what tools or equipment to use
– If your boss trains workers about specific procedures and methods
(credit: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1779.pdf)

It’s not hard to imagine how these apply to WWE wrestlers — This really seems like an area where their meticulously scripting of everything could really bite them in the ass. Not to mention the fact that WWE, not the wrestlers, sets the time and location of all the work. Tools and equipment, ditto for chairs, mics, and the ring itself. And as for training, there is the Performance Center.

Obviously WWE treats the wrestlers as independent contractors when it comes to the financial angle, not covering travel and health care expenses. And any attempt by a wrestler to file an SS-8 and get classified as an employee of WWE would be treated by Vince as an act of war and fought to the bitter end (Stephanie could even compare it to being like 9/11 for her, ugh).

But I think in terms of the behavioral control exerted on the wrestlers, they clearly seem to have a good case for being classified as workers for tax purposes. People might cite the case of actors, whose work is under similar control by production companies and directors, but actors have a union, and Vince probably doesn’t want his wrestlers being counted as members of SAG-AFTRA either.

Anyway, I just thought this information might add to the discussion. Keep up the reviews! 

And yes, I did finally win my battle with the IRS to get classified as an employee at a novelty t-shirt kiosk in the mall food court.