Newrevenue.org

I’m getting closer to concluding that smokable marijuana should be taxed by weight, and edibles by potency of the processed material in them.  Asking around, I got this confirmation from someone who knows lots more than I do:

I’ve formed a new North Carolina nonprofit, the Center for Sensible Revenue.  Some allies like the name better than Center for New Revenue.  Heck, I started out with the label New Taxes, so I’m moving toward the mainstream.  Still keeping http://www.newrevenue.org.

Representative Diane Russell’s marijuana legalization bill in Maine would impose a $50 per ounce tax — and unlike so many others, includes indexing for inflation. « Read the rest of this entry »

Wherever marijuana is legal, it will be taxed.  Federal Code section 280E is broad, but it has the salutary effect of denying tax deductions for advertising.  (Whatever your view of legalization, public policy ought to discourage advertising for marijuana as it does for lotteries, alcohol, and tobacco.)  Colorado income tax law tracks federal law, so Colorado ganjapreneurs can’t deduct advertising expenses on their state returns, either. So far.  A bill in the Colorado House would change that. « Read the rest of this entry »

There are two kinds of commercial marijuana:  raw, and processed.  Processed is more powerful.  We can tax the raw stuff like beer, and the processed stuff like liquor.

That is, the base of a marijuana tax would be weight for raw — smokable product; and potency for brownies, tinctures, and everything else – potency by THC content, maybe with a CBD factor – and maybe further refinements as we learn more.

A pure percentage tax like ALL MARIJUANA TAXES SO FAR makes me nervous.  The reason is that NO OTHER “SIN” TAX works off pure percentage of price so far as I know.  « Read the rest of this entry »

Executive Summary:  We override treaties ALL THE TIME.

Some folks point to old U.S. commitments to ban marijuana in a series of multilateral treaties as a show-stopper for marijuana legalization.  The United States made such a commitment in the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, https://www.unodc.org/pdf/convention_1961_en.pdf,  fifty-some years ago, they note, so they say we can’t change our rules.  Our only listed option is this:  “If UN antidrug treaties are construed as prohibiting federal legalization, they should be amended to eliminate provisions that produce such a reading.”  See, e.g., Steven B. Duke, “The Future of Marijuana in the United States,” http://law.uoregon.edu/org/olr/volumes/91/2/documents/Duke.pdf.

Amending a treaty with scores of signatories is impractical to the point of impossibility.  Are we stuck?

No.  We can, we repeatedly and deliberately do, and we should change our internal laws in the face of conflicting treaty obligations.  (We override the treaty by statute;  some prefer the terms “breach” or “violate,” but “override” is the technical tax term.) « Read the rest of this entry »

This just came out:  http://law.uoregon.edu/org/olr/volumes/91/2/documents/Caulkins.pdf.  It looks thoughtful and thorough.