Facebook’s decision to build a new data center in Henrico County has whetted the county’s appetite for high-tech economic development projects and potential tax breaks to lure them.
The Senate Finance Committee unanimously endorsed Senate Bill 268, proposed by Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant, R-Henrico, to let local governments create a separate category of personal property tax that would allow them to depreciate the value of equipment in computer data centers.
The bill was prompted by both Henrico’s success in luring the $1 billion Facebook project by slashing its personal property tax for data center equipment last year and its desire to attract more investments in data centers by making it easier to adjust the value of taxable equipment as it ages.
