How would your small business like to get out of collecting Wyoming sales taxes from your customers? You could lower your prices to what it costs you to provide a service or product to those who do business with you and even be left with a small profit to pay your personal bills. Would that not be a great opportunity to grow your business and reduce your costs?
Well. Guess who was given that kind of benefit? None other than the data centers. They have an exemption for servers and software (“critical hardware and software”) if they “invest” $5 million or more in “infrastructure. * That means the cost of construction of their own buildings and structures. These tax breaks lower their cost of doing business and the prices they charge for the sale of our data to big marketing corporations.
Furthermore, if the “investment” is $50 million or more in capital infrastructure, they are also exempt from sales taxes for the costs of power supply, back-up power generation and specialized heating and air conditioning.
Wouldn’t all our local business like to have such tax breaks?
Why are data centers so special that politicians would give them this generous benefit? Why are we not as worthy especially when we are Wyomingites and many of the owners and builders of these huge data centers are not?
In 2010, the Wyoming Legislature passed HB0067 overwhelmingly; a sale tax exemption for computer companies. https://www.wyoleg.gov/Legislation/2010/HB0067
I question their wisdom.
*Wyoming Statute 39-15-105a) (viii)(O)
~ Ross
