7 Professions WWE Superstars May Have Portrayed Incorrectly
4. Irwin R. Schyster
If you live within the United States Of America, you ought to know exactly who the Internal Revenue Service is. As a salaried employee, a portion of each paycheck received should be withheld by your employer and paid directly to the IRS. If you are a freelancer, then you should be paying the applicable amount of your earnings to the IRS every quarter as "estimated taxes." Either way, you are expected to file a statement of your earnings and expenses to the IRS each year.
However, when thinking about "the IRS," a lot of people simply think negative thoughts as this institution is taking away a sizable chunk of your income. In turn, the Irwin R. Schyster character of the WWE -- I.R.S., for short -- was meant to represent inspired animosity and resentment held towards taxation. After all, isn't it easy to boo someone who is trying to take away what you have earned as a result of your hard work?
While it is possible to pay your taxes entirely without interacting with an IRS employee, there are a variety of professions held by men and women within the service. They are people who handle customer service calls, there are people who review filed tax returns, there are people who negotiate debt collection and so forth. IRS employees are based all over the States as where your taxes are paid is dependent on your state of residence.
In a WWF Action Zone promo from 1994, I.R.S. referenced repossessing someone's headstone. That one is up for debate, and will be better clarified as part of the Repo Man section of this article. But the "top 10 tax tips" promo, which can be viewed via the WWE Network, did have a fair amount of accuracy. Receipts need to be kept. You can't claim your pets as household dependents. The cash made at your last garage sale needs to be reported as does any money made while collecting unemployment. Actual research went into those tax tips.
But I.R.S. was known to call WWE fans "tax cheats" as part of his promos, which would assume everyone in the building to be cheating on their taxes. Actual employees of the Internal Revenue Service will not do that, so the American judicial system is predicated on people being innocent before proven guilty.