While we applaud all of the efforts the industry has made, both with legal challenges, and a proposed bill to repeal the tax sponsored by Sen Jonathan Lindsey, we also believe in another challenge that the tax was implemented outside of constitutional lawmaking process.  Legislators delegated lawmaking authority to MI Treasury, without any meaningful standards or safeguards, and Treasury implemented rules without following the Administrative Procedures Act.  The taxable products for affiliate transfers are not in statute, and the 50% markup assumption which was first publicized via bulletin in Dec 2025 to take effect 48 hours later, changed tax liability and did not go through the APA, bypassing fair notice, public comment, and JCAR review.  The method in which this tax has been implemented is unique and unprecedented in Michigan.

Neither taxable product categories nor their definitions are found anywhere in statute, or within any administrative rule sets.  Through FOIA, we learned that no data was used in the assumption of the 50% wholesale to retail markup, and the Cannabis Benchmarks source Treasury cited to justify the assumption has stated they were never contacted by the state and that they "“wouldn’t recommend using that blog post to set an entire state’s tax program.”

A full summary of the argument can be found below, and Cannabis Benchmarks communications can be found in the FOIAS & Communications tab