Legal Cannabis Support – Professional Advisors – A Clarion Call

Press Release (ePRNews.com) - Oakland, CA (USA) - May 29, 2018 - I am writing this post to express my personal views regarding the incredible opportunity 2018 provides me as a CPA – tax practitioner with thirty-seven years in professional practice. I was prompted to write this post in part as a consequence of the posts of others as is described below. The principal reason for writing this post is to call on all advisors with any interest in this incredible opportunity to act as members of a group whose over-riding goals are the successes of their clients.

First, let me describe the incredible opportunity that 2018 provides me and many others. Over the past 18 months, I have been given the opportunity to become immersed in the legal commercial cannabis industry in California. The overnight transformation from a laissez-faire, largely unregulated marketplace into an exceptionally complex, highly regulated marketplace with twenty-three state-level agencies, and hundreds of county and municipal agencies are breathtaking. In a short span of time, a professional advisor has been presented with the greatest challenges of a professional lifetime in a Wild West landscape. In this environment, professional advisors have both an opportunity, and of far greater significance, the obligation, to provide their skills, guidance, and creativity so their clients succeed and California’s fledgling regulated cannabis industry thrives.

During the last week, I happened upon two articles:

• What to Look for in a Cannabis Accountant – James Hunt Esq, Harris Bricken

• Tax Audit Defense Worth It? – David W. Klasing,

Both of these articles were unfortunately written by very skilled and accomplished tax attorneys who appear to have completely abandoned the “client success comes first” principle that seemed to be second nature to the attorneys named above and so many others with whom I have worked. The authors of these two articles made a deliberate choice in these articles to use a combination of fear-mongering, intimidation and leveraging off of client anxiety to pursue their own enrichment. Demeaning CPA’s enrolled agents and other advisors in the pursuit of self-aggrandizement is not a formula for client success.

Our next post is going to specifically focus on the needs of the cannabis industry and what attorneys and CPAs can do to effectively and efficiently serve those needs.

Please take the time to also read  – Cannabis Biz Tough – Lawyers – CPA’s