Colo. Regulators Trying to Determine Marijuana Prices

In order to implement the tax approved by public vote

Colorado regulators have begun surveying marijuana businesses about the price of pot, in an effort to implement a new excise tax that voters passed earlier this month.

The tax places a 15 percent levy on the wholesale price of recreational marijuana when it moves between the grower and the seller.

The challenge, though, is that Colorado's forthcoming recreational marijuana industry won't have a true wholesale market for at least the first nine months. Instead, marijuana businesses must initially grow almost everything they sell — meaning the wholesale transactions that will be subject to the excise tax are really just pot transfers between two parts of the same business in which no money is exchanged. Businesses are allowed only a small number of transactions in which they can buy marijuana grown by another business.