{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"KZYX News","title":"Tax protest one of many efforts to address cultivation increase","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":389,"description":"December 2, 21021 — Tax revolts have a storied place in American history, going back to the Boston Tea Party, when the Sons of Liberty set off a revolution by destroying an entire shipment of British tea to protest taxation without representation.\r\nMore recently, Flow Cannabis Company co-founders Michael Steinmetz and Flavia Cassani invited California cannabis businesses to join them in withholding cultivation taxes until they see real, actionable change, presumably in California’s cannabis tax structure. In a recent article in Medium, they declared that they would recommend to their board that, instead of paying the tax, they place the estimated amount in an escrow account until the change takes place.\r\nSteinmetz did not respond to an email or a phone call asking him to comment for this story, though he did speak with the Sacramento Bee shortly after the editorial appeared.\r\nThe California Department of Tax and Fee Administration recently announced that taxes on flower, leaves, and fresh cannabis per ounce will go up next month, due to inflation.\r\nAll three taxes rest squarely on licensed cultivators.\r\nAnd so does the risk in the strategy of withholding the tax, according to Omar Figueroa, a longtime cannabis attorney in Sonoma County.\r\n“Cultivators are required to pay the cultivation tax when they transfer the cannabis to distribution companies like Flow Kana,” he explained. “So if the distributor does not pass those taxes along to the state (because the distribution companies are supposed to be surrogate tax collectors for the state), if they fail to do their duty, they are putting the cultivators at risk. So cultivators would be wise to make sure that they get receipts showing that they remitted the taxes to the distribution companies, so that they can clear themselves from liability.”\r\nThere can be severe consequences for failing to pay the cannabis cultivation tax. Under the revenue and taxation code, any licensee who does not pay their taxes is subject to...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/xZpAumwbhFUpJUYcwaQ1-q6snzOyqAm13l7cW6AWPCM/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9mMzkz/NjAwNjc2OWMyZmFk/YWY2YTdmYjI5M2Mz/YWMxNy5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}