NY coffers hit new high from marijuana tax receipts: Its extraordinary
New York’s coffers are starting to get a financial high from marijuana sales after a slow start.The Empire State is expected to generate $161.8 million in tax revenues from its legal weed business for the fiscal year ending March 31 — or four times what it raked in last year.Gov.Kathy Hochul’s budget released last week also projects generating $248 million in revenue from the state-licensed cannabis industry for the next fiscal year running from April 1 to March 31, 2026.That’s a lot of green — up from $43.3 million raised in 2022-2023 amid a fitful rollout of the program.State budget officials predict the revenues will then grow to $339 million in FY 2027, $363 million in 2028 and $374 million by 2029, based on expansion of the legal market.The state taxes ganja wholesalers and retail products.A wholesale excise tax of 9 percent is imposed on cannabis firms, while an excise tax of 13% is levied at the retail sales level — with 9% going to the state and 4% to participating localities such as New York City.An excise tax of 3.15 percent also is imposed on the gross receipts from medical cannabis firms that have been in existence for a decade.Forty percent of the state’s revenue from the legal cannabis taxes are allocated to education funding across the state, while another 40% goes to a community reinvestment program that will provide grants to neighborhoods most impacted by cannabis prohibition.Recipients of the first round of $5 million in the funding will soon be announced, officials said.The market has ramped up in recent months after a rocky rollout marred by lawsuits, a massive illegal market and enormous backlogs in the awarding of retail licenses issued by the often-criticized, understaffed and overwhelmed OCM.Since then, law enforcement officials ramped up their inspections and closures of illicit weed operators under a new state law, and court cases that held up the opening of new legal cannabis dispensaries were resolved.Hochul also ordered a...