cannabisnews.com: Man Assessed $1 Million for Pot





Man Assessed $1 Million for Pot
Posted by FoM on June 05, 2000 at 06:14:44 PT
The Associated Press
Source: The Sun News
Charles Thomas Jr. doesn't own any land near his trailer, where police seized more than 500 marijuana plants last year. Thomas says he didn't plant them. And, after being questioned by police, he was not charged with a crime. A local grand jury declined to indict Thomas. 
But the state nonetheless is demanding that he pay $1,161,859.94 in taxes, penalties and interest on the marijuana under a 1994 law that allows such an assessment based only on a police officer's report. The Marijuana and Controlled Substances Tax law says that anyone who possesses enough illegal drugs to be considered a drug dealer must pay taxes on them. Lawmakers hoped the measure would recover some of the profits of the illegal drug trade and get tough on drug dealers. Anyone with five or more marijuana plants is considered a dealer and must pay $1,000 per plant. A person with at least 42.5 grams of marijuana must pay $3.50 per gram. In cases in which a dealer is also convicted of a crime, it serves, in effect, to levy a substantial additional fine. But even when the standard of proof in criminal court cannot be met as in Thomas' case the law can still punish those identified by police as drug dealers. ``I don't know what I'm going to do,'' said Thomas, 26, a college dropout from Breathitt County. ``I could never pay this off.'' Relying on a police report that listed him as the ``dealer'' responsible for the plants, the Kentucky Revenue Cabinet has ordered Thomas to pay the tax on them. Just to appeal the tax bill, Thomas must first post a bond in the amount of the tax that the state says he owes, which Thomas called impossible. ``It's about drove me crazy,'' he said as he stood in front of his trailer home and surveyed the hollow where police seized the marijuana plants. ``I don't own any of this. I don't control any of it."Jackson, Fla.Published: Monday June 5, 2000Copyright © 1999 Myrtle Beach Online. Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/taxact/mjtaxact.htm
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