#35 | Reclassifying Cannabis and Will Working Remotely Survive? feat. Chris Piazza & Joel Patterson

Practical Tax with Steve Moskowitz

Chris Piazza and Steve Moskowitz discuss the many aspects to having a cannabis business when the product is illegal, interstate business, and will working remotely survive? Will there be an office space “crash” or will people want to come back to work? Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Chip Franklin: Welcome to Practical Tax with Steve Moskowitz, our tax attorney extraordinaire. I'm Chip Franklin. Steve, good to have you here as always. Steve Moskowitz: Always a pleasure. Chip Franklin: It's interesting to talk about the many different things that surround tax. In fact, it's almost impossible to find subject matter that's not affected by the government and the internal revenue service, right? Steve Moskowitz: It's funny, but anybody that goes out to dinner with me knows that no matter what you say, somehow that reminds me something about tax. Chip Franklin: Right. Well, this is a topic that we talk about a lot and you've actually done videos before on this, but it's constantly changing. And that is a business of cannabis in the United States, a business that has a built-in irony. The fact that cannabis is still a schedule I controlled substance. Or THC anyway. And so joining us right now is Chris Piazza from Cannabis Devices. And here, Chris, good to have you here with tax attorney, Steve Moskowitz, with Practical Tax. Chris Piazza: Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Yeah, Chris with CannaDevices. Chip Franklin: So in just a couple years, your company's done incredibly well. You supply 10 publicly traded cannabis companies, along with a lot of other operators in that business. And throughout all this growth, you guys have supported small businesses, and Steve and I love to talk about the success of small businesses in this country. It is the backbone of this country. You're also a founding member of a nonprofit startup syndicate as well. So let me just pose this question to both you. And I'll start out with, how would you describe the state of America's cannabis success right now? We'll start with you, obviously, Chris. Chris Piazza: It's a growing industry. It's going to keep growing, and ever changing from here. What I think we're starting to see is a little bit more consolidation. We're starting to see some more bigger players taking a little bit more foothold. Now we're starting to see brands where the cannabis dispensaries were before. We're starting to see a lot more brands build, and companies a little bit like mine and the accessories, the non plant touching. It seems to me that the plant itself, the gold rush is over and now the licenses have value. But we're starting to see a lot more consolidation. The east coast is spreading west, and that's my view of the state of it currently. Chip Franklin: Steve, how does that work, if a cannabis business in Illinois wants to work with a cannabis business in California? Does the fact that it's a schedule I controlled substance affect that relationship? Steve Moskowitz: So I got to use the technical term, as a lawyer. So I'll use the proper technical term. There's total craziness here. And what happens is that you have a business that is illegal on the federal side, it's legal in some states, and there's all kinds of problems. And of course, me and taxes, the first thing I look at is, well, what's the taxability? Okay, so number one,