The Utah Foundation just released a study on sales taxes. Among its findings is that Utah has granted 91 separate exemptions to the tax, which cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
Anyone who has been to the Legislature knows how attractive each of those exemptions sounds when it is proposed. And yes, state lawmakers have even created some especially for data centers. But no one ever mentions what one of these will add to the total.
The information at the beginning of this column came from a study two years ago by a group called Good Jobs First. That study agrees with the premise that data centers can be good for a local economy, but not if local governments give away all the tax benefits.
