Some supervisors want to go slow in order not to cause the Data Center industry any growing pains. We reject that position. The Data Center industry already gets a sweet deal with their bulk load discount rate from Dominion Energy, from other incentives from the state, and of course from their transmission infrastructure paid for BY ALL OF US!
Isn’t that enough?
Letter: Hold board to its promise to raise data center taxes | Opinion | insidenova.com
It’s time to raise the PWC tax rate on Data Centers to be competitive with the adjacent counties.
On April 9th (next Tuesday), your Board of County Supervisors will hold public hearings on the proposed 2025 budget. Among the items to be discussed are proposed tax rates for real estate and data centers.
A February 21st Inside NOVA article reported: “Supervisors also began discussions on potentially implementing a major tax hike on data centers”, but “some Democrats wanted more time to meet with data center companies to see how they could make the hikes as painless as possible.”
Loudoun County’s data center tax rate is $4.15, Fairfax County’s is $4.57 and Fauquier just proposed $4.15. Why are we worried that raising PWC’s data center tax rate to only $3.70 might not be “as painless as possible” to big tech behemoths whose massive presence in Northern Virginia has already been fueled by generous taxpayer-subsidized incentives? The Georgia legislature voted to suspend such incentives last month.
Warren Buffet famously said that secretaries should not pay a higher tax rate than their billionaire bosses. Yet that is precisely what is happening in Prince William County. That situation should be rectified immediately, not gradually.
Equitable tax policy should be embraced by both parties, but it is particularly hypocritical of Democrats to keep coddling wealthy corporations who are destroying our environment.
The BOCS has promoted data centers as a panacea for PWC taxpayers. Hold them accountable by telling your supervisor to maximize the data center tax rate and use the resultant proceeds to lower your property taxes. That’s what they’ve been promising you for years.
Bill Wright
Gainesville
Supervisor Yesli Vega provides additional information:
The Board of Supervisors is currently working on the budget for the 2025 fiscal year. As part of these discussions, we are considering whether to raise the tax rate on data centers from the current rate of $2.15. Each raise of $0.05 generates approximately $1.8M. If we were to raise the rate to $3.70, it would generate approximately $55.8M in new revenue.
Below are options the Board may consider:
1) Leave as is ($2.15 per $100)
2) Raise gradually over next 4 years
3) Adopt higher rate now ($3.70 per $100)
For comparison, the tax rate on data centers in Loudoun County is $4.15 and in Fairfax County it’s $4.57.
This survey will be available until Friday, April 12th. Thank you very much for your participation. Your opinion is greatly appreciated.
If you feel strongly about this, consider sending an email to the entire Board of County Supervisors by emailing BOCS@pwcgov.org. You can also find a directory of phone numbers for each member of the Board on the county website. Finally, consider attending one of the last few budget meetings on April 9th, April 16th, or the April 23rd and speaking publicly.
The last official public hearing is on April 9th. You deserve to have your voice heard.
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