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What does New Jersey’s marijuana vote mean to me?
Seven out of ten New Jersey voters this month affirmed that we must decriminalize marijuana. The state’s Attorney General quickly announced that all marijuana prosecutions are paused while we wait for cannabis industry legislation. Now the state government is scrambling to find ways to generate massive amounts of tax revenue from the drug. Much regulation…
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Cannabis taxes will drive consumers back to unlicensed channels
Common sense, anecdotal conversations and third party reports tell us that the unlicensed pot industry is growing and will always be larger than the licensed industry. One report in September 2019 estimated that the unlicensed industry in California is three times larger than the licensed industry. In other states the unlicensed industry approaches 100% of…
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Tax Court upholds “gross receipts method” to determine tax liability
A recent U.S. Tax Court Case captioned “Raymond Chico and Ruby Chico v. Commissioner”, Respondent upheld the use of a very simple tax accounting tool by the IRS in determining the tax liability of a cannabis-related business. The IRS used the ‘gross receipts method’ to add up all receipts from all sources and determined that…
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Tax Court upholds IRS over legal dispensary
A recent U.S. Tax Court case challenged the ability of the Internal Revenue Service to deny all tax deductions as invalid for a cannabis-related business. The business “Northern California Small Business Assistants Inc.” was a legal dispensary in California. The Tax Court denied all of the arguments of the business as invalid and upheld the…
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Looking past decriminalization
This coming week our federal legislature will take up a bill to decriminalize cannabis. Most states, including ours, are attempting similar measures. But my form’s focus isn’t on these proceedings. In fact, we have little confidence in the near term outcome. That timeline really doesn’t matter in the big picture. What we know is that…
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The role of the CFO in the marijuana business
The role of the small business Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is typically described in four distinct functions. I describe my own CFO role as filling five functions in the emerging marijuana industry. #1 Recordkeeping The CFO has primary responsibility to assemble, safeguard, manage and store the financial records of the company. This basic but necessary…
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What you don’t know about taxes…
Have you ever wondered why you hear on TV that some taxpayer’s who do not pay their taxes can settle for “pennies on the dollar” while others less fortunate are prosecuted and go to jail? If you are one of the 1 in 15 persons in this country with serious tax delinquencies, it is critical…
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