Marijuana Business Owner Stumbles in Constitutional Tax Appeal

An owner of a medical marijuana business convicted for tax crimes after failing to disclose that business to the IRS didn’t properly raise a challenge to Congress’s constitutional authority to tax marijuana, the Sixth Circuit said Thursday.

Ryan Richmond appealed after a district court in Michigan ordered him to pay $2.78 million in restitution to the IRS and serve a 24-month prison sentence following his tax evasion conviction by a jury in September 2023. Richmond asked the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit to remand his case for resentencing, arguing the federal government’s taxing scheme for marijuana actually ...