aBIZinaBOX Cannabis

Our commitment to the commercial business in California has caused us to create an industry-centric practice group. The group has professionals in Evanston, IL HQ

and Oakland, California. We have devoted several years of study to the application of our regulatory compliance, tax, tech, reporting, and accounting experience and services to the unique requirements of the industry.

The practice is focused on California businesses, and recently Oregon, Washington, and inbound international investment, particularly mezzinine positions. The complexity of the issues facing commercial businesses, we have concentrated on being CPA’s so we do one thing well rather accept mediocrity in several. We have added a new summary page on Paying Taxes With Cash.

BCC, CDFA and CDPH released revised regulations on Oct. 19, 2018 we will be reviewing our FAQs and making changes as quickly as we can.

Elmer Cannabis Fudd, Dope CPA

Our CPA Cannabis Experience

We have substantial experience and expertise in the industry :

The unique financial record-keeping needs of cultivators, retailers, extractors, processors, and distributors.

Experience with the selection of optimal operating structures for each participant in the industry.
Experience in adjusting structures and modifying financial record-keeping to comply with a rapidly evolving regulated California market.
An understanding of the challenges presented by a long history in the industry of “doing business in cash” and the associated problems.
A practical understanding of the banking, card processing, and anti-money laundering issues applicable to this industry.
Substantial hands-on experience with the relevant Regulators.
Both of our Managing Directors have over thirty-five years of professional practice experience.

Focused Expertise relating to California Commercial Cannabis CPA Practice

Media Room on ePRNews – is exactly what it sounds like. – The Newsroom of aBIZinaBOX Cannabis Practice Group
Our reel which contains some samples of our work. aBIZinaBOX Cannabis Group – Reel
The story about how we, managing our own SEO internally and brought a domain that was new in December 2017 with a DA of 0 to a DA of 20 in eight months which gives us search and market parity with BridgeWestCPAs and Henry Levy Group. – aBIZinaBOX Cannabis – Moz DA – 20
I write a weekly column for CannabisLaw.report which has > 80K weekly followers called “According to Zoot”, and our profile appears on the site at aBIZinaBOX Cannabis. The publisher, Sean Hocking is a wonderful reference for us.
We have a podcast series start on NPR sometime in the 4th Quarter
We published a series of technical white papers that address accounting, tax and regulatory compliance for new California cannabis businesses called Cannabis Business Start-Up Series.
We produced a comprehensive set of due diligence tools for private equity investors to use themselves or retain us to do called Due Diligence Suite
We developed a series of commercial business documents including manifests, purchase orders, etc that are fully compliant with the IRS, FTB, CDTFA and the California cannabis regulatory agencies which we call California Commercial Document Suite [“CCDS”].

Our experience includes issues relating to permitting, licensing as well as reporting and paying marijuana excise tax and gross receipts tax at the municipal and county level.

We have developed effective strategies for addressing the onerous impact of the limitation on the deduction of ordinary and necessary business expenses imposed by Internal Revenue Code § 280E on businesses engaged in “trafficking” in a controlled substance. Our IRC Sec. 280E Repository contains a number of articles both our own original analysis and cutting-edge thought from other sources. Check it out. it is NOT the “same old bullshit that everyone else posts and claims IRC Sec. 280E expertise.

A Leader in California Commercial Cannabis Industry CPA Practice

aBIZinaBOX’s – Cannabis will continue to monitor on a daily basis the evolution of the regulation of California’s cannabis industry to retain our position as a leading cannabis CPA firm with practical expertise. We will maintain our position as a leader in financial record-keeping and report for California cannabis by continually adjusting to the demands of this evolving industry.

Fudd – Dope CPA

We upgraded the search function on our website. The site now uses Google Custom Search to search this site, our parent site, the cannabis regulators in California – BCC, CDPH, CDFA, CDTFA, FTB and the IRS.

Cannalaw Blog

Procedural Hurdles for Washington Marijuana Businesses October 23, 2018

Regulatory challenges can be substantive or procedural. Substantive challenges include things like Washington’s ban on out of state ownership and its view that licensee royalty payment constitute profit-sharing. These types of rules and interpretations are challenging because, as a policy matter, businesses aren’t allowed to pursue certain strategies that they otherwise would. Procedural challenges, on...

What You Need to Know Now: BCC Drops Revised, Proposed, Permanent Cannabis Rules October 22, 2018

Last Friday, we wrote about the amended proposed permanent cannabis regulations that are now in a 15-day notice-and-comment period for each California agency—the Bureau of Cannabis Control (“BCC”), Department of Public Health (“DPH”), and Department of Food and Agriculture (“DFA”). Each of the proposed rules can be found here, here, and here. The next round...

California’s Proposed Modified Cannabis Regulations Could Prohibit Intellectual Property Licensing (!) October 21, 2018

On Friday, the California Bureau of Cannabis Control, California Department of Public Health, and California Department of Food and Agriculture issued 15-day notices of modification to the texts of their respective proposed regulations. The California Cannabis Portal has published links to each notice and the modified texts of the proposed regulations. For each set, the...