Last week, I wrote a piece entitled "Deschedule Cannabis, Don't Reschedule It." The post came on the heels of President Joe Biden's announcement that the federal government is considering the federal scheduling of cannabis. As I noted, rescheduling cannabis to schedule II or below is a bad idea, because it would subject cannabis to DEA regulations similar to prescription drugs. I want to devote this post to exploring the serious tax implications on cannabis businesses if the federal government rescheduled cannabis on schedule II specifically.
Anyone familiar with the cannabis industry has heard of section 280E of the Internal Revenue Code, a topic we've written about often over the years. Section 280E provides in full:
No se admitirá deducción ni crédito alguno por cualquier importe pagado o en que se haya incurrido durante el ejercicio fiscal en el ejercicio de cualquier actividad comercial o empresarial si dicha actividad (o las actividades que la componen) consiste en el tráfico de sustancias controladas (en el sentido de los anexos I y II de la Ley de Sustancias Controladas) que esté prohibido por la ley federal o por la legislación de cualquier Estado en el que se lleve a cabo dicho comercio o negocio.
In other words, businesses that "traffic" in substances on schedules I or II of the Controlled Substances Act cannot make federal tax deductions (with some limited COGS exceptions which are outside the scope of this post). This means that any state-licensed cannabis business currently is subject to much higher taxes than it would be if it sold other consumer goods, by virtue of the fact that it can't take standard deductions. If a business were to sell drugs that were currently on schedule II without the proper entitlements, it would also be subject to 280E.
Now let's take a step back and look at the rescheduling issues. If the Drug Enforcement Administration rescheduled cannabis to schedule II, it would create a pathway for cannabis to be prescribed (as opposed to current physician recommendations) by certain licensed healthcare professionals, in accordance with DEA regulations. Rescheduling cannabis to schedule II would NOT have the effect of making all state-licensed cannabis businesses federally legal. They would still be federally illegal, and as mentioned, a new channel for federally legal physician prescriptions would open up.
En otras palabras, si la DEA reclasificara el cannabis, todas las empresas de cannabis con licencia estatal seguirían infringiendo la ley federal; pero, en lugar de traficar con un estupefaciente de la Lista I, traficarían con uno de la Lista II. Esto significaría que el artículo 28oE seguiría siendo aplicable y que las empresas de cannabis obtendrían muy poco alivio. Si a esto le sumamos que se produciría de la noche a la mañana un cambio radical en la legislación y la política federales (lo que aumentaría el coste del cumplimiento normativo y la incertidumbre), reclasificar el cannabis en la Lista II no es una buena idea.
Si el presidente Biden está decidido a reclasificar el cannabis, lo mejor sería situarlo en la Lista III o en una categoría inferior, donde no se aplicaría la sección 280E. Dicho esto, como ya señalé en mi última publicación, reclasificar el cannabis plantearía más problemas que simplemente dejar de clasificarlo.
