When millions in taxes owed by 10 Los Angeles cannabis businesses went up in smoke, California’s tax agency took what it could find in the pot shops and put it all up for auction. The businesses owe the state more than $14.4m. Interested attendees will have to bid on the lot as a whole, not individual items. Items up for grabs range from glass bongs and pipes to a raffle wheel and sandwich boards. This is the first time the agency is auctioning personal property taken from a weed business. Between 2020 and 2022, the state had seized more than $32m in cash and products from such businesses. “Seizing and auctioning property from cannabis businesses that evade the law is a tool to recover the taxes owed to the state,” said Nick Maduros, director of the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration.
