By Rebecca Stamey-White and Jeff Carroll
Only businesses holding a license to sell alcohol at retail can sell alcohol to consumers. That simple fact complicates matters for unlicensed entities such as online marketplaces, delivery apps, and delivery services that would like to create or enhance platforms to facilitate alcohol sales. Marketplace platform providers, alcohol licensees, and alcohol and tax regulatory agencies all have different goals and concerns when it comes to the sale of beverage alcohol products. In this Alcohol Marketplaces blog series, Rebecca Stamey-White, partner at Hinman & Carmichael LLP, and Jeff Carroll, general manager of Avalara for Beverage Alcohol, will explore the multiple issues surrounding alcohol marketplaces and propose a compliance framework to meet the goals and concerns of different stakeholders.
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By Rebecca Stamey-White and Jeff Carroll
Only businesses holding a license to sell alcohol at retail can sell alcohol to consumers. That simple fact complicates matters for unlicensed entities such as online marketplaces, delivery apps, and delivery services that would like to create or enhance platforms to facilitate alcohol sales. Marketplace platform providers, alcohol licensees, and alcohol and tax regulatory agencies all have different goals and concerns when it comes to the sale of beverage alcohol products.
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With the Biden Administration putting together its federal agenda as Democrats take control of Congress (counting Vice President Harris’ tie-breaking vote), many in the cannabis industry are renewing their push for federal legalization. Cannabis legalization could also be a major economic driver for the post-Covid recovery period, just as the end of alcohol Prohibition drove tax revenue during the Great Depression. But do the benefits of decriminalization, access to banking and interstate commerce necessitate the trade-off of high taxes and complex compliance that will reduce equitable access to the legal market?
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Mississippi’s attempt to enforce prohibition era laws prohibiting Mississippi residents from buying wine out of state and shipping it to themselves- the sting operation.
We last reported on this case in August of 2018 when the trial court in Mississippi decided (by granting our motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction) that the cases could not proceed because the out of state defendant retailers and wineries served with a complaint passed title to the wine purchased in the state in which they were licensed. This was a sting operation in which state agents logged onto dozens of popular websites, lied about their ability to purchase, accepted the terms of sale without question, ordered and paid for wine, took delivery in the state of sale and asked that the wine to be shipped to them in Mississippi.
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The California ABC recently issued its 6th Notice of Regulatory Relief, this time embracing supplier and retailer virtual events and removing the deadline to conduct cause marketing / commercial co-ventures (“CCVs”) for covid relief and potentially benefiting retailers, which we previously covered here. CCVs are promotions where a portion of the bottle sale goes to charity.
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