Legal pot taxes could add $5B a year to government coffers, CIBC says

Call it Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's secret stash.

A new report from CIBC World Markets says Canada's federal andprovincial governments could reap as much as $5billion annually intax revenues from the sale of legal marijuana.

CIBC economist Avery Shenfeld crunched the numbers using currentestimates of Canadian recreational pot consumption, the revenueexperience in U.S. states that have legalized, and other factors such as prevailing "sin tax" rates on alcohol and tobacco.

• Justin Trudeau not banking on financial windfall from legalized pot
• Canada's new marijuana laws must attend to business: Don Pittis
• Ex-police chief Bill Blair to handle Liberals' pot legalization file
• Legalizing pot in Canada will run afoul of global treaties, Trudeau warned

"The bottom line is that federal (and) provincial governments might reap as much as $5 billion from legalization, but only if all the underground sales are effectively curtailed,"writes Shenfeld.

"That's on the order of 0.25 per cent of GDP, no barnburner."

The Liberal government has promised to legalize, tax and regulatemarijuana and has made MP Bill Blair, the former Toronto policechief, the lead on investigating a new regulatory model.

Trudeau maintains that legalized pot will not be a cash cow, andthat all revenues will be used to address public health andaddictions issues.

"It was never about a money-maker, it was always about public health, public safety," the prime minister said in December during a year-end interview.

The experience of Colorado and Washington states, where pot sales were legalized and taxed, suggests no dramatic increase in marijuana usage but a potential for pot tourism.

"The desirability of increased marijuana tourism inflows will be questioned, no doubt, but they would generate additional fiscal revenues for government on their other tourist spending," Shenfeld writes.

The report uses Colorado sales figures to estimate a Canadian pot market worth about $10 billion annually, then looks at net profit margins from Ontario's government booze monopoly and other associated income and payroll taxes to come up with the revenue total.

Shenfeld also suggests that the oft-touted law enforcement savings from pot legalization may not materialize due to ongoing international obligations to stop marijuana exports and the enforcement needed to curb the untaxed black market.

"Deficits won't simply go up in smoke as a result," he concludes.