California‘s cannabis industry suffers from a seemingly unending list of problems: high taxes, prohibitionist cities, a related lack of retail licenses and oversupply of non-retail licenses, a monster illegal market with no end in sight, burdensome and often senseless regulations, and so on. Unfortunately, rescheduling won’t solve most of these problems–at least not directly. Today
Yesterday, some big news dropped that the cannabis industry has anticipated since last summer. I take issue with some of the headlines, so here’s mine: “DEA Reportedly Agrees to Initiate Proposed Rulemaking to Reschedule Marijuana…”. Clearly, I’m a lawyer and not a reporter, but the “Reportedly” and “Initiate Proposed Rulemaking” are key considerations here at
Arizona’s record-breaking cannabis market In the landscape of booming and busting cannabis markets, Arizona emerges as a standout success story. A naturally beautiful state that attracts a sizeable group of tourists every year, Arizona skyrocketed past $1 billion in total cannabis sales for 2023. Unlike its northern neighbor of Nevada, Arizona has exceeded $1 billion
California’s cannabis taxes are a disaster, with no end in sight. I’ve written about the state’s tax problems extensively, but today I want to talk about what the state can do when it comes to tax collection. Late cannabis taxes? Get used to hefty penalties If a licensed cannabis business fails to timely or fully
For anyone who missed it last month, we have published a full recording and transcript of our webinar titled: “Attorney Insights on the Cannabis Industry 2024: Ask us Anything.” You can view the recording and transcript here. The webinar was well attended, and attorneys Vince Sliwoski, Griffen Thorne and Jesse Mondry answered a variety of
The OLCC announced several changes to the tax compliance rule this weekend at the Cannabis & Psychedelic Section of the Oregon Bar Association’s annual conference (where I was pleased to moderate a panel on the failures of legalization). This rule has been a hot topic in Oregon cannabis for several months and the OLCC will
The internet is littered with writings on the relative merits of corporate forms and tax elections for cannabis businesses. Even the best of these articles are as dull as ditchwater, because the topic is tax. Most of the authors mention subchapter S taxation at some point, and the showier ones may even dredge up cannabis
I’d like to send a shoutout to tax lawyer Nick Richards for an intriguing opinion piece published on Friday, September 1 in Marijuana Business Daily. Nick outlines two approaches to potentially help cannabis businesses recoup buckets of cash from Uncle Sam. One approach, which is known to us, may be utilized by cannabis businesses throughout
Huge news yesterday. Huge! The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has officially recommended that marijuana be rescheduled, from Schedule I to Schedule III of the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA). This means that the country’s top health agency has finally conceded that cannabis has medical value, and isn’t a drug of abuse
Whether you’re the kind of person who wants to End the Fed, or the kind of person who wants to tax the rich like a Scandinavian nation, you’ll probably agree on one thing: cannabis taxation is a problem. And it’s not just a small one. It’s theft. If I (or basically anyone else) had to
