Data centers cut property taxes on homeowners, by providing lots of additional property to tax. The more property there is to tax, the less tax needs to be imposed on each property. Data centers use very few government services (unlike homeowners, who use things like schools and parks), so data centers don’t add much to a county’s costs. Democratic-run Loudoun County, Virginia, has lots of data centers and lower property taxes than other Democratic counties in northern Virginia, like neighboring Fairfax County and Arlington County. Data centers generate almost half its property tax revenue, enabling it to tax homeowners at lower rates despite Loudoun County’s rapidly rising government spending under Democratic control.
Loudoun County explains:
- The data center industry is an important part of Loudoun County’s economy that contributes significantly to the county’s resources and substantially lowers the tax burden on the residential taxpayer.
- Data centers added $16 billion in value to the real property portfolio in Loudoun County in 2024 for a total of $41 billion. The growth in data center real property continues to reduce pressure on the residential tax base to fund the growth of services.
- Data centers generate almost half of the county’s property tax revenues. Over the past decade, revenue growth from data centers has allowed the county to address increasing service needs for Loudoun County Public Schools and to fund improved services to our residents while consistently lowering the real property tax rate. That revenue growth is also a major factor in the decision to lower the tax rate on vehicles by 67 cents in Fiscal Year 2026.
- The assessed value per square foot of data centers is $609, which is around triple the value of other commercial uses.
- For every $1 in services that Loudoun County provides to data centers, the county receives $26 in tax revenue.
- Absent the data center industry, the county’s real property tax rate would likely be more than $1 per $100 in assessed value instead of the current $0.805 cents per $100 in assessed value which is six cents lower than the 2024 tax rate. Since 2008, the county’s tax rate has dropped from $1.285 to $0.805.
- The largest concentration of data centers in the world, known as “Data Center Alley” is located in Loudoun County.
Even as Loudoun County’s property tax rate has gone down, it has risen sharply in Virginia’s Arlington County, which has almost no data centers. In 2008, Arlington County’s property tax rate was set at $0.838 per $100 of assessed value. But by 2025, Arlington’s property tax rate was $1.033 per $100 of assessed value, not including stormwater fees. Real estate tax rates have fallen since 2008 in Virginia’s Prince William County, which has lots of data centers, falling from $1.032 to $0.920 per $100 of assessed value.
Critics of data centers blame rising electric bills on them. They are a factor in rising electric bills, but not the biggest factor. Electricity bills rose 13% year over year in Virginia, which has “the highest concentration of data centers in the world.” That’s more than the national average increase of 6%. But other states with lots of data centers saw electricity prices rise slower than the national average. “Texas, for example, is second only to Virginia with more than 400 data centers.” But electricity “prices in the Lone Star state increased about 4% year over year in August, lower than the national average.” The state with “the third most data centers in the nation” had its electricity prices increase “about 1% in August 2024 over the prior year period, far below the average hike nationwide.”
There are other, bigger factors in rising electricity costs in Virginia, such as the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) enacted in 2020. The VCEA’s renewable energy mandates and other requirements “account for more than half of the price increase” from 2024 to 2025, according to a Virginia think-tank.
My property taxes last year in Arlington County were a whopping $17,442, plus $439 in stormwater utility fees, for a total of nearly $18,000. I would gladly pay higher electric bills in exchange for cutting my property tax rate down to the more reasonable level in Loudoun County. That would save me about $4,000 in property taxes, which is far more than my entire electricity bill for the year.
