California’s legal marijuana industry is expected to involve everything from backyard growers to sprawling fields in the farm belt, storefront sellers along rural roads to chain-store like outlets in Los Angeles.
State tax collectors are taking initial steps to get a hand into that vast, emerging economy, with billions of dollars at stake in the future for the state treasury. State analysts have estimated that state and local governments could eventually collect over $1 billion annually from the production and sale of legal pot.
Just how big a job that will be, no one knows.
The state has no reliable way to predict how many new retailers will enter the marketplace when marijuana becomes legal in 2018. It’s estimated there could be 25,000 cultivators who will have to register and begin paying taxes.
But it’s only a guess how many operations making money off the fragrant, sticky buds will try to remain hidden in the black market.
“It’s just going to be the wild, wild West out there,” predicted Jerome Horton, who sits on the state’s tax-collecting Board of Equalization.
The panel on Tuesday started framing its job, approving on a divided vote a proposal to request funds to begin gradually adding staff in anticipation of collecting taxes.