Ohio’s biggest tax break for data centers is more expensive than once thought. A lot more expensive. In 2024, the state sales tax exemption for data centers cost Ohio about $555 million in revenue, four times more than the state Department of Taxation forecasted.In 2025, it cost a whopping $1.6 billion, eleven times more than the original estimate of $136 millionAnd that’s to say nothing of the local sales taxes – another $166.8 million in lost revenue in 2024, according to new actual cost data provided this week by Ohio Department of Taxation spokesperson Andrea Lannom. The tax department’s biennial forecasts of the size of the controversial tax exemption shared with the public amount to jarring lowballs of the actual figure, even when accounting for the imprecise nature of budget forecasting and the novel technology at hand. And the massive savings, realized as an exemption to Ohio’s 5.75% statewide sales tax, flow to some of the biggest companies on the planet, including Meta (Facebook), Alphabet (Google) and Amazon, all of which have recently built or are building arena-sized data center warehouses here.
In 2024, the sales tax exemption cost Ohio $554.9 million, Lannom said. One year later, that snowballed to $1,568,700,00.
