Data center tax breaks give rural Indiana leverage over Big Tech | Opinion
Indiana Democrats won local, state and federal offices on a platform of affordability, anti-corruption and populism. Stock market investors seem to think they are going to bring down the hammer on data centers. If the Republicans who survived are smart, they will join Democrats. Democrats would be wise to avoid the low-hanging fruit, though, which is to eliminate state and local tax breaks for data centers. That would not stop Big Tech, and it might leave local governments with fewer benefits than they could have negotiated because of our convoluted tax system. The state’s sales and use tax exemptions originated from bipartisan legislation passed in 2019, which also authorized local governments to give personal property tax breaks to data centers. The goal was to compete with other states, such as Illinois, that were passing similar legislation in a race to the bottom to attract development. Indiana's economic development regime has been a failure in many respects, but the tax incentives in this case had an unexpected benefit. Better planning could make those incentives incredibly valuable to taxpayers. Tax breaks give rural communities leverage The state has a huge budget surplus and wastes its money on plenty of things . I'm
