Month: September 2014

Rosemary Habib is the author, along with Reuben Finighan and Steven Davenport, of “Testing for Psychoactive Agents,” BOTEC Analysis Corp., http://liq.wa.gov/publications/Marijuana/BOTEC%20reports/1c-Testing-for-Psychoactive-Agents-Final.pdf (Aug. 24, 2013), which seems to me by far the leading analysis of that topic done to date. She graciously agreed to let me print her thoughts about the bud-trim line for a marijuana tax.

My question:  

Updating https://newrevenue.org/2014/05/12/can-the-bud-trim-line-hold/:  Let’s say there’s a huge tax on bud and a small tax on trim.  Would that give producers an incentive to cheat – to shift bud, at the margin, just a little, into the trim category and then use it to make concentrates?

Might not a tax-evader deliberately characterize bud as trim to boost the THC content – and thus value – of concentrates?  That evasion depends on the purchaser believing that he is getting a better, more valuable product — edible, vaporizer cartridge, or whatever.  And that belief would need to come from THC labeling (however inaccurate) or some other claim or experience or report.

Rose Habib’s response:

My first impression is, yes it could be more economical to move lesser buds over into the trim pile.  A lot of that depends on the market.  Continue reading “Rose Habib on the Bud-Trim Line”

This document freezes producer marijuana taxes through the end of 2014: Average market rate late 2014.

These bills sometimes disappear. Here is the text of New York State Senator Liz Krueger’s bill imposing “an excise tax of $50.00 per ounce on marihuana and $50.00 per quarter ounce of concentrated cannabis.”  http://open.nysenate.gov/legislation/bill/S6005-2013 Accessed 14 September, 2014.

BILL NUMBER:S6005 Continue reading “NY bill: bud $50/oz.; concentrates $200/oz.”

Several posts here have looked at whether taxing bud at one rate and trim at another is viable.

One argument that the line is self-enforcing, as bud is smoked and trim made into concentrates.   But even without a tax incentive to put bud in the trim pile, businesses do just that.  Here is an ad, downloaded 14 September 2014, promising concentrates made from . . . ALL BUD NO TRIM!