“Our city license now is $20,000 a year,” Blurton said. “The state license is $96,000. Then we pay 8.75% sales tax to the state.”
Blurton said he also pays an additional 4% cannabis tax to the city, on top of an additional 15% tax to the state, “which is making the cost of our product so expensive the black market is booming now.”
It’s booming to the tune of $8.7 billion in illegal sales this year. That’s more than double the legal market, according to an industry report released by BDS Analytics.
Illegal pot sales outpace legal cannabis in California
This is a country economically founded on smuggling and tax evasion. George Washington had to deal with the Whiskey Rebellion with the early American Citizens because of a 6 cent a gallon tax in 1794 and to this date, moonshining is alive and well.
“Dude, just legalize it, tax it and everything will be cool. Everybody will like obey the law.”
Kinda not working very well, is it?
The sad thing is, had CA not immediately tried to tax it into oblivion, the legal market might have eventually driven out the black market. Then you can gradually raise taxes. As an analogy, think of the process of taxing internet purchases.
But no. No patience, no self-control, no conception of knock-on or second-order effects.
The Laffer Curve is a harsh mistress.
$116,000 in yearly licenses alone. Wow.
Which is exactly why the illegal side is booming. Instead of a simple tax and small regulations, they went nuts.
[Nelson Muntz] HAA HAA! [/Nelson Muntz]
The one proof I need that government can’t manage as efficiently as the private market:
It’s LOSING money on weed.
Weed, people.
According to a story on Instapundit yesterday, we’re also running out of sand, and government must step in. At which point we will COMPLETELY run out of sand…
The sand is true. Ft Lauderdale and Miami have to replenish the beaches every year and twice if a hurricane hits.
Too much tax money from hotels and visitors will be lost otherwise
Holland has plenty of contractors qualified to deal with this. Turning sea into land is something they’ve done for 800 years.
The same folks who see big $$$ in taxing legal cannabis into oblivion will do the same thing to gun owners and ammo sales, with a vengeance. Don’t rely on courts to save us. Except for poll taxes, the SCOTUS seldom has met a tax it didn’t like.
Not quite. ISTR some municipality tried to shut down the local newspaper by levying a tax on newsprint, but the Supremes shot it down as a transparent attempt to regulate a protected liberty. They’ve shot down ammo taxes in the past for the same reason.
One of the bread and butter moneymakers for the crew from “Goodfellas” was smuggling cigarettes into NYC.