Canada's Liberal government unveils its 2024 budget on Tuesday, and the country's cannabis industry wants one thing above all: relief from a heavy excise tax burden.
Struggling Canadian cannabis companies have been asking for a tax cut for years now, without success.
However, the 2024 budget being released Tuesday afternoon comes soon after two recent developments that offered a shred of hope for tax reform.
In a February pre-budget report, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance recommended limiting the excise tax rate to 10%.
Not long after, Canada's long-awaited legislative review of recreational cannabis legalization recommended that the federal finance department “consider a review of the excise tax model.”
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Regardless of those recommendations, industry insiders interviewed by MJBizDaily reporter Solomon Israel weren't optimistic that excise tax reform will be announced Tuesday.
“We don't have any indication at this point that there will be something in the budget,” said Paul McCarthy, the newly appointed president of the Cannabis Council of Canada (C3) industry group.
The odds of an excise tax cut in the budget are “very uncertain,” said Frederico Gomes, a cannabis equity analyst with Calgary, Alberta-based ATB Capital Markets.
Check out Solomon’s story to learn more about the prospects of the Canadian cannabis industry’s expectations being met.
There’s “no reason” for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to delay its long-awaited decision on moving marijuana from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3 of the Controlled Substances Act, the head of the Food and Drug Administration told a House committee.
However, FDA Commissioner Robert Califf seemed to hint that the DEA could treat adult-use marijuana – now legal in 25 states – differently than cannabis used for medicinal purposes.
Vangst, a major cannabis industry staffing platform, acquired CannabizTemp in what is believed to be the first such move in the marijuana human resources sector.
“CannabizTemp was hands down our largest competitor,” Karson Humiston, Vangst’s founder and CEO, said of an acquisition that likely will strengthen her company’s temporary staffing division, Vangst Gigs.
MJBizDaily is the leading resource for the cannabis industry, cited by The Wall Street Journal, Forbes and Harvard Business Review. MJBizalso produces the No. 1 cannabis business conference, MJBizCon.
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