By James Caldwell, Torch assistant editor

The New York Times published a detailed report on the U.S. government's plans to crack down on businesses that misclassify independent contractors, which could directly affect WWE.

The big issue that could affect WWE is President Obama's Administration looking to re-write a "three-decade-old" tax rule that allows companies to "indefinitely classify employees as independent contractors — even when the government knows they are misclassified — so long as the company once had a reasonable belief that the workers were contractors."

Looking back three decades to when WWE began to snap up wrestlers from across the country to build their national wrestling promotion, wrestlers were independent contractors moving from territory to territory. At the time, there was "reasonable belief" to classify wrestlers as independent contractors.

According to Obama, the emphasis on re-evaluating the independent contractor vs. employee classification is to fix a system where companies often-times classify workers as independent contractors to avoid paying social security, medicare, and unemployment tax while not being obligated to provide healthcare to workers.

Obama estimates that the re-classification of workers would produce $7 billion over ten years. Considering the economic hardship facing the U.S., the crackdown has obviously become a priority issue.

The issue could also affect former WWE CEO Linda McMahon, as she has yet to formally address the topic of independent contractor vs. employee classification during her campaign for Senator in Connecticut.

It will likely become a hot topic during future debates with Republican opponent Rob Simmons as the U.S. government continues to focus on recouping lost revenue with a recent federal government survey concluding that approximately 3.4 million U.S. workers are misclassified as contractors.

Link: New York Times report. Thanks to Torch reader Ford for the tip.

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