IRS Targets Medical Marijuana Businesses

CC: IRS Targets Medical Marijuana Businesses
in Government's Ongoing War on Pot May 29 2013


The IRS has been functioning as an arm of justice, employing the U.S. tax code as a weapon in the federal government's ongoing war against legal cannabis.

The majority of Americans favor legalization of marijuana, while 18 states and the District of Columbia have already legalized medical marijuana. But pot businesses in those states are vulnerable to the federal government's strategic application of IRS Code Section 280E, a law enacted in 1982 after a drug dealer claimed his yacht and weapons purchases as legitimate business expenses -- and long before medical marijuana was first legalized in California in 1996.

Now the IRS is applying a rule originally aimed at illegal (and often violent) drug trafficking to businesses that are entirely legal under their states' laws. Medical marijuana dispensaries are facing audits and heavy tax bills that could force them out of business.

"Whether or not this is a coordinated tactic to try and shut down the industry, or send a chill through the industry, or if it's just the IRS trying to collect as much revenue as they can from easy targets, it's clearly outside the spirit and intent of the law," said Kris Krane, a former executive director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy who now serves as principal of 4Front Advisors, a medical marijuana dispensary consulting firm. - Read the entire article at The Huffington Post.

Medical Marijuana Businesses Targeted By IRS 2011/03/18

IRS Targets Medical Marijuana Facilities October 13, 2011



Medical Marijuana Patient Jerry Duval's Prison Term
Could Cost Taxpayers More Than $1.2 Million May 29 2013
American taxpayers could spend upwards of $1.2 million over the next decade imprisoning Jerry Duval, a Michigan medical marijuana patient who was convicted of distributing the drug.

Where are all of the Taxbaggers and Norquest?

Why are we so upset?
After all, there are relatively few people in federal prison just for marijuana possession.

Another data point in
‘Prison isn’t the only metric in ruined lives’

Let’s stop wrecking lives over a bag of weed
by Paul Zuckerberg in the Washington Post.

In a little office on the third floor of Metropolitan Police Headquarters on Indiana Avenue NW is a small window to the future — open to some, closed to many. This is where you get your D.C. “police clearance.”

If you have never been there, that’s because you have never applied for a job flipping burgers, mowing lawns or cleaning restrooms in the District. Room 3033 is the human resources department for the poor, the young and the disenfranchised. The piece of paper you get there — if you have no criminal record — is what you need to land a job. Without it, you’re out of luck.

For 29 years, I have defended clients facing marijuana charges in the District. At every initial appearance, without fail, the judge admonishes the defendant either to stay in school or to hold down a job. In the majority of cases, however, a job is not possible because most employers in this town will not hire entry-level workers who do not have a police clearance.

What crime is increasingly tripping up those looking for work? Possession of marijuana. ….

By the way, in case you missed it, Mike Riggs at Reason has been doing an outstanding job of demanding accountability from the ONDCP. After last week’s Drug Czar trumpeting of the link between drugs and crime (which was widely ridiculed), Riggs pointed out the conspicuous absence of alcohol data, resulting in an astounding series of dance steps by the ONDCP’s communications director on Twitter. Here’s the conclusion: Drug Czar’s Office Explains Why It Omitted Alcohol Data From Drug and Crime Report.


IRS targets medical marijuana facilities October 13, 2011

An open letter to marijuana prohibitionists
and so-called third-way-ers dwr
Dear sons of SAM and daughters of the American prohibition; to all the treatment industry, drug testing, private prison, and sheriff union lobbyists; and, of course, to our friends who are required by law to lie...

dwr: Exit Strategy

The Drug Policy Alliance has created a new document; An Exit Strategy for the Failed War on Drugs: A Federal Legislative Guide

Outright War Against Marijuana Dispensaries

"Should the IRS campaign be successful, it will ... eliminate tens of thousands of well paying jobs, [and] destroy hundreds of millions of dollars of tax revenue."

Dispensaries providing marijuana to doctor-approved patients operate in a number of states, but they are under assault by the federal government. SWAT-style raids by the DEA and finger-wagging press conferences by grim-faced federal prosecutors may garner greater attention, but the assault on medical marijuana providers extends to other branches of the government as well, and moves by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to eliminate dispensaries' ability to take standard business deduction are another very painful arrow in the federal quiver.

The IRS employs Section 280E, a 1982 addition to the tax code that was a response to a drug dealer's successful effort to claim his yacht, weapons purchases, and even illicit bribes as business expenses. Under 280E, individuals involved in the illicit sale of controlled substances -- including marijuana, even medical marijuana in states where it is legal -- cannot claim standard business expenses on their federal taxes. full story continued @ alternet

The Obama Admin's Anti-Marijuana Manifesto

Playing the IRS card: Six presidents who used the IRS to bash political foes
The Obama administration isn't the first to face criticism of using the Internal Revenue Service as a political hit squad. Since the advent of the federal income tax about a century ago, several presidents – or their zealous underlings – have directed the IRS to turn its formidable police powers on political rivals.

As President Coolidge's Treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon ordered an IRS audit of a rival, only to find the Franklin Roosevelt administration, later, doing the same to him. President Nixon was caught on tape ordering IRS field audits of dozens of people deemed to be his political enemies. In other cases, a direct line of accountability to the president is not so clear. But whether directly ordered by a president or not, the IRS field audit has long been an option that gives new meaning to the term "bully pulpit."

Raids target medical marijuana business

 

Naturally.