AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 Texans came to the Capitol to make their voices heard as state senators met to review a 2013 law that gives sales tax exemptions to qualifying data centers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI call them billion-dollar data center devils,\u201d said Linda Polley with Save Hill County.<\/p>\n
The cost to the state in lost revenue from data centers has grown from a $14 million estimate over a decade ago to a projected $3.3 billion in sales tax losses over the next two years.<\/p>\n
Some are calling for a pause on new data center growth before the state loses any more money.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to stop; we need to collect information and make an informed decision as a state,\u201d said TA Smith with the Texas Coalition Against Data Centers.<\/p>\n
For standard data centers to qualify for the sales tax exemption on essential equipment and electricity for up to 15 years, a company must operate in a 100,000-square-foot building, commit to a $200 million investment and create at least 20 nonconstruction jobs.<\/p>\n
Facilities can get the exemption with a promise to meet the requirements, but the audit process to ensure companies are up to par starts five years after the center is operational.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is incumbent upon all of us to make sure that these are wise investments. And if you get an incentive from the state of Texas that you actually do what you say that you\u2019re going to do,\u201d said state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham.<\/p>\n
According to the comptroller\u2019s office, of the 20 facilities currently being audited, six are non-compliant but have been operating sales tax-free for five years. Non-compliant companies must pay the unpaid sales tax back, though a timeline wasn\u2019t specified.<\/p>\n
State Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, suggested a bond for companies instead of a straight tax exemption to ensure better taxpayer protection\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there was a bond in place, then that would ensure tax against any type of default by these data centers,\u201d said West.<\/p>\n
The Data Center Coalition thinks the tax exemptions are a large attraction for centers to come to Texas.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt fosters continuous reinvestment in the facility to generate broader economic activity, and taxable outputs for data center servers are replaced on average every three to five years. That is their useful life, but it also accounts for evolutions in technology,\u201d said Dan Diorio with the Data Center Coalition.<\/p>\n
Some lawmakers think that even without the tax exemptions, the companies building data centers will still choose Texas, and Gov. Greg Abbott seems to agree. He\u2019s included among legislative priorities repealing data center sales tax exemptions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 Texans came to the Capitol to make their voices heard as state senators met to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389136,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[6329,1658,132,134,133,6328,1570,102,6363,223,287,82,27,835],"class_list":["post-389135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-app-capital-tonight","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-capital-tonight","tag-ctv","tag-dallas","tag-erin-davis","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-san-antonio","tag-texas","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}