The change in the presidential administration has focused cannabis businesses on the potential for legalization nationwide.
Running parallel to full federal legalization will be a corresponding regulatory and taxation scheme replacing the current regime of IRC §280E which prohibits anything but the cost of goods sold being deducted from a state licensed cannabis operation’s income statement.
The evolution of the federal taxation of cannabis started with the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, which applied tax to marijuana used for medicine.
Historians and critics alike maligned this legislation as an attempt to stop the use of cannabis rather than tax it.