‘Tax us, but tax us fairly,' says Aaron Smith of the NCIA. Pot industry pushes for fair taxes

Republicans aren’t the only ones who want lower taxes these days: the marijuana industry wants to smoke out some of their own tax cuts.

Flanked by dozens of representatives of state-legal marijuana businesses, Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), Jared Polis (D-Colo.), Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.), Denny Heck (D-Wash.) and Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) held a press conference Wednesday to promote legislation that would reform marijuana laws in the U.S. in a way they say would allow businesses to make tax deductions, access bank accounts, be protected from property and forfeiture claims and conduct business the way any other small business would.


“We are asking to be taxed. We are one of the only industries in the country coming to D.C. asking, ‘Tax us,’ but tax us fairly,” said Aaron Smith of the National Cannabis Industry Association.

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The measures, which the industry groups and lawmakers were advocating for on Wednesday, would have the effect of treating legal pot businesses for medicinal or recreational marijuana more like other normal businesses. Pot advocates say that this could lower the tax burden on pot businesses.

As 21 states and D.C. have legalized some form of marijuana, lawmakers say, the growing conflict between federal and state law forces many of these businesses to go off the books. Unable to deduct expenses like rent and improvements, unable to open bank accounts because banks fear prosecution for money laundering or aiding and abetting, and subject to efforts by the Department of Justice to seize their assets, businesses operate in a cash-only environment, a recipe for disaster, lawmakers said.

“When you have that [cash-only situation], we’re looking at a public safety issue that we just can avoid right now,” Perlmutter said.

Heck said that forcing these businesses to remain cash only through ornery laws is “putting up the welcome mat for organized crime,” as well as putting these businesses at risk of theft and preventing officials from accurately tracking the cash flow.

Heck and Perlmutter are preparing to introduce their bill, the Marijuana Businesses Access to Banking Act, which would protect financial institutions that service legal marijuana businesses. The NCIA estimates half of marijuana dispensaries in the nation don’t have a bank account.

Blumenauer on Tuesday introduced a piece of legislation that would amend IRS code to allow deductions and credits related to state-legal marijuana sales. The bill has seven co-sponsors, including Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.).

Lee has introduced a separate bill, the States’ Medical Marijuana Property Rights Protection Act, to protect the property owners of state-sanctioned medical marijuana facilities, whom she says the DOJ is increasingly targeting in prosecutions in California.

With bills like the Industrial Hemp Farming Act, which removes hemp from the definition of marijuana so farmers can cultivate it, Blumenauer said lawmakers are presenting a framework of relatively technical, minor adjustments that can be attached to other bills.

“I think these measures are just common sense as Congress continues to discuss the pros and cons of the prohibition policy. These are simple, common-step measures that simply catch up with where the states and the people of this country already are,” Polis said.

Although the fate of these bills is unclear, Blumenauer was optimistic about their outcome.

“We are early in this Congress,” Blumenauer said. “We’ve been busy repealing Obamacare for the 37th time, and so forth, and we’ve had some distractions on Ways and Means, but we’re moving into the period where there is substantive legislation moving forward, and there is a long way to go for example with the farm bill.” Or the reforms could be dealt with at the end of the year, in the types of bills Blumenauer said Congress has started to pass “that kind of keep the operation afloat when we’ve just given up legislating.”

The important thing, the lawmakers agreed, is that it’s up to Congress to deal with the conflict of state and federal laws, which have left the Obama administration in a bind.

“The basics are the law that we put on the books as a legislative body, the Congress, is contrary to the laws of these states, and so the executive branch is in a pickle,” Perlmutter said. “This is a serious issue where 21 states have a different view of the use of marijuana than the laws on the books for the federal government, and so … our job as legislators is to try to align these laws.”

“We’re reaching a tipping point,” Blumenauer agreed.