Cannabis Tax Resolution

A tax problem in cannabis is rarely just a tax problem — it threatens the license, the banking relationship, and sometimes the owner personally. Tax resolution is the practice of getting between you and the taxing authority: stopping enforced collection, negotiating what is actually owed, and building the path back to good standing. Harry Shurek is an Enrolled Agent, federally licensed to represent taxpayers before the IRS in all 50 states — and this firm has been doing exactly that for cannabis operators since 2015.

What we resolve

Unfiled returns — business and personal, one year or many. IRS and state notices and examinations, including 280E-driven assessments where the proposed number assumes zero COGS. Liens and levies, including bank levies that can freeze a cash-intensive business overnight. Payroll tax problems — the most dangerous kind, because trust-fund liability pierces the entity and follows owners personally. And penalty stacks that sometimes exceed the underlying tax.

How resolution actually works

First, compliance: the IRS will not negotiate with a taxpayer who is still behind, so missing returns get prepared and filed — correctly, with defensible 280E positions, because a resolution built on a bad return collapses. Then the negotiation itself: installment agreements sized to real cash flow, penalty abatement where reasonable cause exists, offers in compromise where the numbers genuinely support one, and audit reconsideration where an assessment was built on wrong assumptions. Every case is different; the sequence is not.

Why cannabis cases need a cannabis firm

A resolution practitioner who does not know 280E will concede numbers that were never owed. Proposed assessments against cannabis businesses routinely treat every dollar of deposits as profit — no COGS, no inventory method, nothing. Rebuilding the true liability with §471 capitalization before negotiating is frequently worth more than the negotiation itself. We do both.

Common questions