Pubdate: Wed, 22 Feb 2017
Source: Toronto Sun (CN ON)
Copyright: 2017 Canoe Limited Partnership
Contact: http://www.torontosun.com/letter-to-editor
Website: http://torontosun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/457
Author: Chris Doucette
Page: 8

IT'S A TAX JACKPOT

But owners wait for legalization

Governments have reaped hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes,
licensing costs and other fees from just two illegal Toronto pot
shops, say the dispensaries' owners.

And they estimate federal, provincial and municipal governments have
already collected millions from the rogue businesses across Canada
while the country waits for marijuana to be officially legalized.

"My one Cannabis Culture on Church St. paid $434,000 in HST payments
for the three months, from October to December, and $22,000 in payroll
deductions," the self-proclaimed Prince of Pot Mark Emery said
Tuesday, disputing a recent Toronto Police claim that dispensaries are
not paying taxes.

Emery claims that when he made his first HST payment to Canada Revenue
Agency, he was informed as many as 100 pot dispensaries across the
country have been paying their taxes.

A perpetual line of customers with cash in hand, filed through his
smoke-filled shop on Church St. Tuesday afternoon. A private security
guard, hired in the wake of the recent spike in pot shop heists, kept
watch nearby.

Emery said business has been growing so rapidly since he started
selling dispensary weed at the location last fall that the store's 28
employees can barely keep up.

The booming location typically handles more than 1,500 customers a
day, but last Friday the shop soared to a new high when 1,932 people
stopped in to buy cannabis prior to the long weekend, he said.

"Sales from that one day alone amount to about $10,500 in HST for
CRA," Emery said, adding the shop's HST total for 2017 could be close
to $2 million by year's end.

"That's all new revenue that used to just end up on the street," he
said. "So the government is the biggest stakeholder in my business."

Weed the North owner Cory Stoneham, who jokingly referred to himself
as the King of Cannabis after appearing on the front of Tuesday's
Toronto Sun, said he faces similar dilemmas but on a smaller scale
because he's still growing his business.

The ongoing threat of police raids also go hand-in-hand with operating
an illegal business, but Stoneham claims cops went too far when they
raided his Eglinton West location for a second time last month -
allegedly damaging his storefront sign, tearing the wrap plastered
across the shop's front windows and smashing open an ATM owned by a
third party.

Police deny any wrongdoing.
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MAP posted-by: Matt