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It’s not the sexiest of topics, I grant you that, but i thought it would be interesting to talk to an expert in the space.
Jerry works in the worlds of Cannabis, Vapes & Tobacco and lays bare some of the complexity for small and medium sized US businiess working in the space.
Multiple layers of taxation that fleece the consumer and the retailer and much of it, it seems, purposefully designed to put pressure on smaller end of cannabis retail.
My first takeaway. If you are in a jurisdiction outside the US and you want to find out how not to do cannabis sales tax, the US is a good place to learn from.
My other takeaway is that i’ve never really noticed the cannabis regulators in each of the states pay much attention to the issue.
They are happy to pretend to support smaller business and equity set ups in words alone but little else.
They’ll make them wait months even years for licenses then actually expect them to run a business with punishing overheads and city and sales taxes that up prices for the consumer and force producers to create mass market high THC cannabis that they have to wholesale at silly prices so that the consumer thinks they are getting some advantage for the cannabis they are buying.
My analaogy would be the fast food market in the US. huge plates of food that aren’t nutritionally balanced or healthy for humans to consume, the same applies to cannabis except substiute large helpings with high THC levels which as we’re all learning isn’t the best for human health.
Legislators, adminsitrators and regulators in states and cities actually have the power to do something about this, but they wont because as we all know a sin tax is a great earner and the thinking will never go beyond that.
Jerry Donnini
Jerry grew up in a small family business in South Florida. He watched his family navigate robberies, payroll crises, storms, and the constant pressure of government compliance. That experience gave him something most people in this industry never get: a real understanding of what it means to run a business and how much is at stake when the government comes knocking.
After more than a decade in sales tax, Jerry had seen the same pattern repeat. Businesses would get buried by a state audit, handed off to a generalist law firm that charged $500 an hour and learned sales tax on the job, or left to navigate it alone with compliance software that stopped being useful the moment the audit notice arrived.
He built Sales Tax Helper to close that gap. One platform. Sales tax experts, CPAs, and former state auditors who do nothing but sales tax. A free nexus and liability checker to start, paid tiers from DIY up to full audit defense. No generalists. No surprises on the bill.
