Fulton County leaders are urging local boards that recruit businesses to stop granting tax breaks and other incentives for data centers, which continue to garner controversy across metro Atlanta.
The Fulton County Commission unanimously voted Wednesday to adopt a resolution formally opposing efforts by development authorities to reduce property taxes as a data center recruitment tool. It’s a message the commission is sending to all development authorities operating with Fulton, including the Development Authority of Fulton County, Invest Atlanta and ones chartered by the county’s cities.
The resolution comes as Fulton reassesses data center values for tax purposes, trying to find out if it’s leaving millions of dollars in potential tax revenue on the table by undervaluing these expensive projects.
Commissioner Bridget Thorne, one of the resolution’s cosponsors, said stopping tax breaks for new projects is easy to justify, arguing that Big Tech has shown it wants to come to Georgia regardless of incentives. Metro Atlanta is the fastest growing market for new data center construction, according to real estate services firm CBRE.
“Fulton County taxpayers shouldn’t be subsidizing some of the wealthiest companies in the world that are building these data centers,” she said during Tuesday’s meeting. “Companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta have chosen Georgia because of our workforce, infrastructure and the significant incentives that the state has already given them.”
Development authorities are the business recruitment arms of many county and municipal governments. They have the power to grant tax breaks and provide other incentives to induce corporate expansions and real estate projects.
Though county and city leaders appoint board members, the authorities often operate independently. The commissioners’ resolution is effectively a request for tax breaks to end, but it does not force authorities to stop the incentives.
Some recent data center projects in Fulton have been awarded multimillion-dollar tax breaks by development authorities, namely the Development Authority of Fulton County.
Since 2023, it approved a $32 million tax break for Edged Atlanta’s data center campus at Tilford Yard and a $10 million tax break for Elon Musk’s social media platform X to place new servers in an existing Atlanta data center. It also considered a $45 million tax break for a QTS data center expansion that was already underway, but the request was withdrawn amid public outcry.
Union City’s development authority also approved its own tax break for a $1.8B data center for Microsoft, an inducement initially estimated to be worth $75 million.
Credit: Courtesy Endeavour / Edged Energy
Credit: Courtesy Endeavour / Edged Energy
The authority, which also goes by Develop Fulton, declined to comment to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the commission’s resolution.
Fulton has come under fire for undervaluing commercial properties for tax purposes. A pair of audits confirmed an Atlanta Journal-Constitution/Channel 2 Action News investigation from 2018 that revealed huge discrepancies between the prices paid for commercial properties and the county’s valuation of them.
Such undervaluing, critics contend, shifts the tax burden to homeowners.
Commissioner Bob Ellis, the resolution’s other cosponsor, highlighted the potential tax revenue at stake. He said the Fulton County Tax Assessor’s office recently reevaluated data center assessments, including many new ones that recently came online. That led to a multibillion-dollar increase in the assessed property value of data centers and the value of the computer equipment they contain — both of which are taxed.
The assessed fair market value of Fulton County data centers in 2026 is $3.8 billion, more than five times the value assessed last year, according to the data Ellis showed. Personal property values in data centers, which consist of expensive computer equipment, servers and chips, increased 261% to $4.2 billion.
Ellis said it shows “the magnitude and importance of these things and getting them right from an assessment standpoint and making sure they aren’t abated.”
Data centers have emerged as one of Georgia’s most controversial topics, raising concerns over their energy use, water impacts and proximity to neighborhoods. The data center industry disputes many of those concerns, while also arguing that the tax revenues and jobs generated by these facilities is a key reason why communities should want them nearby.
Credit: Daniel Varnado/For the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: Daniel Varnado/For the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tax breaks and other incentives are often given to woo desirable projects that are considering other locations, and it’s a tool wielded liberally across Georgia.
Some incentives are also codified in state law, including two lucrative sales tax breaks for data centers that is projected to tally $2.5 billion in foregone taxes in 2026. It’s projected to nearly reach $3 billion next year.
Efforts to curtail the state sales tax exemptions have ultimately failed. Pressure has increased, meanwhile, on county and city officials to stop or reduce property tax incentives.
“This resolution isn’t about whether we have data centers or whether data centers should be built or not,” Thorne said. “ … This just isn’t the time that we should voluntarily reduce our tax base by providing additional incentives to companies that have the financial capacity to invest without them.”
Atlanta has banned data centers in many parts of the city and near MARTA stations and the Beltline, although one pending proposal is seeking an exception in Adair Park. Other cities in Fulton have moratoriums pausing the considering of new data centers, such as Milton and Roswell.
“Whether one agrees with those concerns or not, local governments deserve to have those land use decisions respected rather than undermined through additional financial incentives,” Thorne said.
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