When a data center comes to a rural county, the pitch is all jobs and investment. The number nobody puts in front of you is the other side of the ledger: what the project would pay in tax if it simply paid what it owes — and how much of that the county proposes to give away. This page turns that into a figure you can check for yourself.
Why I built this
I built a school-bond calculator so residents could see a proposal in their own dollars instead of percentages and acronyms. This is the county-side companion. It leaves school taxes out and focuses on the two taxing units the Commissioners Court and the Emergency Services District actually control: Leon County and the ESD that covers the site.
Don’t take anyone’s characterization for it — including mine. Enter the project’s value, the adopted rates, and a PILOT assumption, and watch what each scenario actually collects.
Investment is not the same as taxable value
Crusoe’s project is billed as a $34 billion investment. That is not the same as $34 billion in taxable value. In Texas, buildings and improvements are real property; the servers inside are business personal property, appraised separately and often valued very differently — and it isn’t public whether the headline figure even includes the hardware. So I’ve set the calculator’s default to $3.4 billion, a deliberately conservative estimate of what might actually land on the tax roll — roughly a tenth of the announced investment. Raise it toward $34 billion if you think it will appraise higher, or lower it further to model just the real-property shell.
The three scenarios
These columns compare the county’s share only, because the county is the taxing unit deciding whether to abate:
- Full county tax (no abatement). The project pays county tax on its full value every year — the baseline the other two are measured against, and a real option, not a fantasy.
- Leon County’s standard offer. The top of the county’s standard tiered schedule: 100% of value abated for five years, then a taper — 80%, 80%, 60%, 40%, 20% — in years six through ten, with a PILOT on the abated share.
- The company’s ask. Crusoe is asking for more than the county’s standard tiers. The exact terms aren’t public, so this column models the maximum plausible ask: a full 100% abatement for all ten years, with a PILOT on the abated share.
The ESD is separate — and that’s the fire-truck money
Look at the box beneath the three scenarios: the Emergency Services District. When officials say a PILOT will let them “buy the fire department a truck,” remember that the ESD — the taxing unit whose entire job is fire trucks and firefighters — is already collecting its own tax on this project.
That’s because a Chapter 312 county abatement binds only the county. Under Texas Tax Code §312.206, it does not reach the ESD’s share unless the ESD separately votes to join before the county signs. So unless the ESD gives away its own revenue, the data center pays it in full from year one — the same figure in every scenario, because the county’s deal can’t touch it.
At the default value, that’s several million dollars a year for fire and EMS — tens of millions across a ten-year abatement — no matter what the county does. Nobody needs to buy the district a truck; it can buy its own.
Which is exactly why it matters that Crusoe is asking the ESD to abate its taxes too. Granting that would give the fire-truck money away on top of the county’s. The ESD box shows what’s at stake — what the district keeps if it says no, and forfeits if it says yes.
How the PILOT works here
A PILOT — payment in lieu of taxes — is a negotiated payment a company makes on the value being abated. The calculator applies it to the abated share: at a 100% abatement with a 25% PILOT, the county nets a quarter of what full taxation would bring, the same shape as Milam County’s data center deal. The catch: without an abatement, the county usually has no leverage to require a PILOT at all — which is why the full-taxation column shows none. More on that in Can you have a PILOT without a tax abatement?.
What this costs, in their own words
You don’t have to take my word for what an abatement gives away — the officials granting them say it out loud. Below, Caldwell County Judge Hoppy Haden tells a Texas legislative committee that his county gave up tens of millions of dollars just to get a data center to the table over basics like closed-loop cooling — already an industry standard. That “give-up” is the gap between the columns in the calculator below.
What about depreciation?
Officials like to say the full-tax figure is unfair because equipment depreciates — servers, generators, transformers, and cooling gear lose taxable value over time — so taking less up front supposedly “works out.” There’s a checkbox in the calculator to test that directly.
Turn it on and two things happen. Every column shrinks, the ESD included, because depreciation lowers the value beneath all of them. But the share the county gives away doesn’t move — depreciation hits full taxation and the abatement equally, so it cancels out of the comparison. It cannot make “take less now” come out ahead.
It actually cuts the other way. Leon’s abatement forgives 100% of value in years one through five — exactly when a depreciating asset is worth the most. Taking less up front means handing away the peak years and taxing the equipment only after it has aged. That makes a front-loaded abatement worse, not a wash.
One last sleight of hand to watch for: leveling a payment into equal installments is just budgeting, and never changes the total; discounting the total is the giveaway. No company negotiates hard for a fixed payment unless that total is less than what it would otherwise owe — which is precisely what Judge Haden admits in the clip above.
Try it
County (the taxing unit that grants the abatement) — click a box to see its year-by-year detail below
A Chapter 312 county abatement doesn't bind the ESD (Tex. Tax Code §312.206) — the district (whose job is buying fire trucks and paying firefighters) keeps its full tax unless it grants its own abatement. The company is asking it to do exactly that, so this figure is the fire-truck money on the table: what the ESD collects if it declines, and forfeits if it agrees.
| Year | Abated | To county | ESD | Total local |
|---|
This is an estimate for education and planning only, not an official figure from Leon County, any ESD, the appraisal district, or any taxing entity. "Investment" is not the same as taxable appraised value. The three scenarios abate only the county's share; the ESD is shown at full value because a county abatement does not bind it. Verify the adopted rates and any appraisal with the taxing units and the Leon Central Appraisal District.
The defaults are starting points — Leon County’s adopted rate and the $0.10 ESD cap. Enter your own and everything updates. Click any of the three county boxes to load that scenario’s year-by-year detail, and check the depreciation box to apply equipment depreciation across every column at once.
For the reasons officials give for granting an abatement — and my answer to each — see the county’s reasons for data-center abatements, and why they don’t hold up.
Related explainers
- The county’s reasons for data-center abatements — and why they don’t hold up
- How county taxes, the 3.5% cap, and NNR actually work in Texas
- What is a tax abatement?
- Can you have a PILOT without a tax abatement?
This tool is an estimate for education and planning only. It is not an official figure from Leon County, any Emergency Services District, the appraisal district, or any taxing entity. Confirm the adopted rates and any appraised value with the taxing units and the Leon Central Appraisal District.