A major sales tax break for data centers survived the latest biennial state budget cycle, although Ohio lawmakers could axe it anytime in the next year or so.
Legislators and lobbyists from across the aisle have said before they believe it鈥檚 time to rein in the incentives offered to the electric-intensive facilities taking over swaths of farmland. Among many measures in , the legislature eliminated an exemption from sales taxes on materials contractors use to build the facilities.
But Gov. Mike DeWine that.
鈥淵ou want to do things in the right doses,鈥� Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel said Thursday, defending the decision. 鈥淵ou want to have data centers, you want to have new opportunities, you want to have the belief in your young people seeing that the new neat things are coming to Ohio.鈥�
Roger Wehner, Amazon Web Services vice president for economic development, said government incentives鈥攍ike tax exemptions鈥攁re just one factor when selecting new sites for new data centers.
鈥淓very entity has a bucket of tools that they use that they see fit, and currently, the state of Ohio has those tools, and they鈥檙e available to anybody who qualifies, and if we qualify, we avail ourselves of those benefits just like every other industry can,鈥� Wehner said Thursday.
AWS closely considers land and resource availability, he said, among other factors. And the tech giant reinvests into local communities on the other side, he said.
House Speaker Matt Huffman (R-Lima) signaled desire in July to override DeWine鈥檚 veto on the tax break when members of his chamber come back in the fall.
鈥淭he fact that data centers get a tax exemption for their sales tax for their building materials, but a guy who is building a restaurant or a house or a warehouse or something else does not,鈥� Huffman said, 鈥渕aybe that made sense 15 years ago when we were trying to get the data centers to come to Ohio.鈥�
Research in January from left-leaning policy firm Policy Matters Ohio showed that if it benefited project investments pledged by Amazon, Google, and Microsoft in the last two years alone, the state and its local communities will miss out on close to $1.6 billion in revenue.
The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio in July also greenlit a tariff on data centers, levied by American Electric Power, making them commit to paying 85% per month of the energy they say they鈥檒l use, even if they use less.
