Following new reporting about the mushrooming size of Ohio’s sales tax break for data centers, Gov. Mike DeWine on Wednesday announced a pause in the program.
In a news release, he said he directed the chair of the Ohio Tax Credit Authority to “pause consideration of any new data center tax exemption requests” while a new legislative committee studies the growth of data centers in Ohio.
The committee will stop accepting such proposals after its meeting June 1, where an existing data center tax exemption request will be considered.
Ohio offers an exemption to the state’s 5.75% sales tax for data centers that meet certain conditions. The Ohio Department of Taxation previously estimated that Ohio would lose about $136 million in revenue in 2025 via the exemption.
Instead, as Signal Ohio reported last week, the exemption cost Ohio a whopping $1.6 billion, eleven times more than the original estimate.
That’s up from $555 million in lost revenue in 2024, plus another $166.8 million lost to localities that levy their own sales taxes beyond those of the state.
DeWine said the pause would last while the General Assembly’s newly minted Select Committee on Data Centers, which met for the first time Wednesday, fields testimony from stakeholders over the coming weeks.
