Business, Understanding, & Development Summit (BUD Summit) Tackles the Challenge of Extreme and Unfair Tax Rates Facing Cannabis Industry

The BUD Summit, the most comprehensive cannabis trade show ever convened east of the Rockies, will take on the hottest topic in the marijuana business world: excessive federal and volatile state tax rates facing and curtailing the industry.

Headlining a panel at the Aug. 20 conference at the Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill, titled “Taxation: A Nation Divided” will be Keith Stroup, a nationally recognized public-interest attorney and lobbyist who founded NORML; Tom Rodgers, former senior taxation expert with the Senate Finance Committee and the founder of the first Native American-owned cannabis company; and Ken Bazinet, a legalization policy and campaign strategist now advising state governments after 20 years covering the White House for national media outlets.

“We’ve selected a diverse panel with expertise at every level to help address the need to understand the taxation issue and rally industry resources to lobby for a fair and equitable tax system, especially at the federal level,” said Brandon Wyatt, lawyer and program manager for the BUD Summit.

“Thanks to an antiquated, biased and punitive federal tax law, cannabis entrepreneurs doing business legally face a tax rate of up to 70%. That compares to a 30% federal tax rate for other legal businesses. Clearly the cannabis industry must unite to persuade the federal government to remedy this injustice,” added Wyatt, also a decorated disabled Iraq War veteran and national policy spokesman for the Weed for Warriors Project, an advocacy organization working to provide veterans with medical marijuana.

Under Section 280E, of the federal tax code enacted by Congress in 1982, businesses the Internal Revenue Service deems to be “trafficking in controlled substances” are banned from taking advantage of many tax deductions and credits other businesses are allowed to claim. “It’s an unsavory remnant of the failed Reagan-era war on drugs,” Wyatt explained.

Other topics that will be covered at include a veterans outreach panel to display how cannabis based businesses can help advance systemic issues facing the population, “Cannabis reform could mean more than just treating physical pain. “We can cut the skyrocketing homeless and unemployment rates among veterans by giving them jobs at their local dispensary,” Wyatt proposes, Marijuana Times.

The BUD Summit is a national event, with the primary focus of being in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. The Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania cannabis industry is ready to explode. Here are some facts:

• Washington, D.C. has partially legalized recreational use, allows for home-grows, and currently has a fully functional medicinal program
• Maryland is on the cusp of granting 15 cultivator licenses and 94 dispensary licenses in 2016
• Pennsylvania will offer licenses to 25 processors/growers, along with 50 dispensaries, which may have up to three locations each.
• There is an extremely affluent market in Northern Virginia for cannabis related products that migrates toward Washington, D.C. and Maryland.
• The DMV has comprises over 6 million people, making it the largest market in the southeast and the sixth largest metropolitan market in the country.
• With events such as the Capitol CannaShow, the National Cannabis Festival, and 4/02 White House Protest having set the stage, people in the region are interested in the cannabis industry now more than ever.

For more information, please visit the website at www.BUDSDC.com/.