Large cash transactions by marijuana businesses should not automatically be reported as suspicious, according to new IRS guidance.

The tax agency’s guidance is an apparent attempt to clarify the federal Bank Secrecy Act, which requires businesses – including banks – that receive $10,000 or more in cash to file Form 8300 within 15 days.

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Those forms allow the filer to report such a transaction as “suspicious,” information later used by the IRS and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) to investigate possible criminal activity.

But marking a cash transaction from a legal cannabis business as suspicious “defensively” is “an abuse of that box,” IRS Special Counsel Charles Hall wrote in a Jan. 22 memo.

“If they are solely marking the box because

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