2020 Northeast Cannabis Business Conference

Rachel Gillette
Partner and Chair, Cannabis Practice Group
Greenspoon Marder


Rachel Gillette is among the first attorneys in the nation to dedicate her practice to the cannabis industry. Since 2010, Ms. Gillette has helped licensed cannabis and hemp businesses with licensing, permitting and regulatory compliance, business law and transactions, contract drafting and review, tax litigation, corporate formation, and other tax matters, including audit representation. She works with startups and entrepreneurs, investors, and ancillary industry businesses to help develop the cannabis innovation ecosystem, and is a zealous advocate for the industry. Ms. Gillette regularly represents clients before the IRS’s Examinations, Appeals, and Collections Divisions, including cannabis businesses facing the challenges of IRS adjustments under IRC §280E. She has successfully challenged local, state and federal tax deficiencies on behalf of her clients, having prevented hundreds of thousands of dollars in incorrectly assessed taxes, interest, and penalties. She can assist individual and business taxpayers in §280E proposed adjustments, offers in compromise, audit examinations, innocent spouse claims, sales, use, and employment tax matters, trust fund tax penalty assessments, penalty abatements, and levy releases. For several years, Ms. Gillette was the Executive Director of the Colorado state chapter of NORML, the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws. She was a founding member of Women Grow and the National Cannabis Bar Association. She an advocate as well as an attorney, and is committed to helping change laws – and perceptions – relating to cannabis and ensuring state licensed and legal marijuana businesses are fairly taxed and regulated. Ms. Gillette received her Juris Doctorate from the Quinnipiac University School of Law in Hamden, Connecticut, where she served as Associate Editor of the Quinnipiac University Probate Law Journal.

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