Some of the biggest companies in the world are extracting hefty packages of taxpayer dollars to build something the tech giants have to do to be competitive – build new data centers.
Good Jobs First Senior Research Analyst Kasia Tarczynska writes about the massive subsidy packages going to Amazon, Google, Meta and others in the greater Columbus, Ohio region for data centers. The growth has come with a hefty price tag for residents: Almost every single data center project received full property tax abatements, state sale and use tax exemptions and payroll tax credits. Those are taxes small businesses and residents pay in whole.
The full cost of these massive tax breaks has been sparsely disclosed and hard to total but it’s clear the community will be helping offset their costs for decades to come.