Should marijuana businesses pay tax on gross profits or net profits? It sounds like a silly question. After all, virtually every business in every country pays tax on net profits, after expenses. But the topsy-turvy rules for marijuana seem to defy logic. And taxes are clearly a big topic these days.

For nine months, the city of San Jose has attempted to close down San Jose Organics, a major medical marijuana dispensary with over 5,000 members.

San Jose has already fined the dispensary thousands of dollars and told it to cease operations. The city is adding $1,500 a day to its fines for every day it remains open. Now, the two sides are set to face of in court.

In a hidden camera investigation, the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit saw that the dispensary appeared to be violating several city regulations on the sale of medical marijuana.

The medical marijuana business is booming in Los Lunas.

New Mexico has 23 medical marijuana dispensaries, according to the New Mexico Department of Health.  Eleven of them are in Bernalillo County, but to find one of the newest, you have to look south.

The new Natural RX in Los Lunas serves about 350 people.

“We felt like we could serve all of Valencia County, Belen, a little bit of Socorro,” said Trevor Reed, Natural RX’s executive director.

Reed, who runs another shop in Albuquerque, said a lot of his clients were driving up from the south. There was a demand for a shop in Valencia County, so he opened up shop there.

“A lot of veterans. We probably have 40 or so percent veterans. Oddly enough, a lot of seniors,” Reed said of his client base.

Dissonance between state law and federal law in the United States is leading to exorbitant tax bills for marijuana retailers.

While a legal activity in certain states, the sale of marijuana is still considered illegal under federal law.

States like Colorado that legalised the sale of marijuana have reported substantial tax revenue. Currently 23 states and one district have legalised marijuana for medical or recreational use, allowing anyone over the age of 21 to purchase retail marijuana from licensed shops.

However US federal law, including the federal tax system, remains at odds with permissive state laws. The incongruity is resulting in crippling tax bills for fledgling marijuana dispensaries.

When the new Governor of Colorado, John Hickenlooper, was first elected to office, there was some cause for concern. The concern stemmed from Hickenlooper being openly anti-cannabis in his policy. While it was pretty clear that Colorado was experiencing success with the legalization movement at the time Hickenlooper took office, it was too late to backtrack, and it was anybody’s guess how this new arrangement would play out.

Moms for Marijuana International (MFMI), founded by Serra Frank in 2005 whose vision was adopted by Executive Director Cheryl Shuman in 2014, recently celebrated its 10-year anniversary on April 20th, 2015.

In conjunction with the anniversary celebration, MFMI is proud to announce the launch of a marijuana mentorship program and ongoing series of industry networking events in partnership with Cheryl Shuman Inc., a public relations, media, product branding and business development firm.

Legal marijuana is already big business in America. Colorado alone sold more than $700 million worth of legal weed in 2014, its first full-year of legal recreational and medical sales. Three other states and the District of Columbia have legalized recreational marijuana. Twenty-three states and Puerto Rico have legalized medical marijuana, and revenue for the industry as a whole has been growing nearly 34% a year for the past five years. And it’s only expected to keep growing.

These five numbers show just how big legal American marijuana could be in five years.

$13.4 billion

Many praise marijuana legalization as the most effective way to wrest from criminals the well-entrenched illegal market they have created over the past few decades. Many praise the regulations that come with legalization for helping to ensure control and transparency over marijuana businesses and their products. Of course not everyone approves of marijuana regulation, especially those who make their money on unregulated marijuana markets. Marijuana cups and competitions thrive on an unregulated cannabis industry and regulations are starting to cause them hard times.

A new federal bill called the “Respect State Marijuana Laws Act of 2015” was introduced to Congress earlier this week by Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a Democrat from California. It would provide immunity against prosecution at the federal level for individuals and businesses abiding by state marijuana laws. It’s a short document, but its implications are huge.

DENVER — Money was pouring into Bruce Nassau’s five Colorado marijuana shops when his accountant called with the bad news: The 2014 tax season was approaching, and Nassau could not rely on the galaxy of deductions that other businesses use to reduce their tax bills. He was going to owe the Internal Revenue Service a small fortune.

“I had to write a check for $275,000,” Nassau said. “Unbelievable.”

The country’s rapidly growing marijuana industry has a tax problem. Even as more states embrace legal marijuana, shops say they are being forced to pay crippling federal income taxes because of a decades-old law aimed at preventing drug dealers from claiming their smuggling costs and couriers as business expenses on their tax returns.