Politico: That’s a lot of tax relief

Just looking at sales and excise taxes, the eight states where recreational pot was legal in 2019 raised close to $2 billion in revenue, according to Carl Davis of the liberal Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

That adds up to an increase of around a third, or nearly a half-billion dollars. Why the big jump? ITEP says a big part of it was from states like California and Massachusetts, which both started legal recreational sales in 2018, straightening out some early issues in getting their markets up and running. Read more