Oregon data centers may find they are free from a particular Oregon tax if a new bill is passed. The particular tax is a "central assessment" property tax, which was originally used to collect taxes from railroads in the 1800s. The law allowed Oregon to collect taxes based off of the railroad networks' entire values, rather than just the value of the part of the track within Oregon.
The law is currently in effect to allow Oregon to collect central assessment taxes from a variety of sources, including cable networks, telephone service providers and microwave towers. However, many companies are fighting the state in court in order to avoid paying those fees.
The current law is being looked at to allow Oregon data centers to be more competitive with those outside of the state. Larger organizations with multibillion dollar networks are currently afraid of settling in Oregon, for fear that they will be asked to pay taxes on all of their current network to the state.
The new bill is currently en route to the Oregon Governor Kate Brown, who has reportedly promised to sign it into law. The bill itself will declare Oregon data centers immune to the effects of central assessment.
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