B.C. towns push for higher property taxes on AI data centres
Mackenzie's mayor says the Iren data centre pays the same rate as a coffee shop and wants it taxed as light industry.
Municipal governments in B.C. are pushing for higher property taxes on AI data centres so their communities benefit from the boom, Canadian Accountant reported on Friday.
In Mackenzie, about 165 kilometres north of Prince George, Australian company Iren has converted a 4.5-hectare site initially built for cryptocurrency operations into an 80-megawatt data centre for training and running AI models. It employs about 60 people in permanent jobs, Mayor Joan Atkinson said.
"From the get-go, we knew there weren't going to be lots of jobs," Atkinson said. "But any jobs are better than no jobs." The town lost about 425 jobs when a sawmill closed in 2019 and a pulp mill the following year.
Atkinson said the facility pays property taxes at the same rate a local coffee shop would. The local government wants the province to tax data centres as light industry, which would roughly triple Mackenzie's tax revenue from the centre.
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