Interactive Tool

See your city's future in numbers.

Enter details about a potential project and your community. We project tax revenue, budget impact, and jobs over a 10-year horizon using Georgia-audited figures and peer-reviewed research, not marketing estimates.

Your inputs

Adjust the sliders; results update live.

Project

Estimated total capital investment. A representative large Georgia data center campus may involve more than $2 billion in total investment (Carl Vinson Institute, 2025).

Drives job estimates. Hyperscale campuses run 100–500+ MW. Drives construction and permanent employment benchmarks.

Tax base phases in as each section is placed in service, not all at once. Large campuses often take 8–12 years.

Estimated share of investment that becomes taxable real and personal property. Illustrative, not a Georgia statutory rule.

Millage (enter each separately)

County general fund only. Georgia counties typically levy 8–18 mills for general operations.

School board millage, set separately from county. Often the largest component.

Municipal or special-district millage. Set to 0 if the site is outside city limits.

County budget & incentives

Used to show county-only revenue as a share of the county budget, not the combined tax bill.

Estimated incentive reduction on the gross tax bill. Real Georgia deals: Microsoft/Floyd had a 9–12 year abatement; Clayton County approved ~50% declining over 10 years. Default 40% is conservative.

These presets check the model against published Georgia figures. Small differences are expected: assessment, millage, and incentive terms vary by project and county.

Tax base & digest
Est. taxable property value
$1.8B
Fair-market value of taxable assets
Est. assessed digest added
$740M
Taxable FMV x 40% (Georgia standard)
Full-build gross annual tax
$27M
All jurisdictions combined
Net after abatement: $0
Net 10-yr local collections
$120M
Phased build-in + after incentives

Revenue by jurisdiction (full-build, gross)

County general fund$0
School board$0
City / other$0
Combined gross$0
Est. net county revenue as share of budget0%
Jobs & workforce
Peak construction jobs
195
At peak mid-build (MW x 1.3)
Permanent roles
38
Ongoing FTEs once operational
Construction job-years
585
Estimated employment accumulated across the selected buildout period.
Observed local wage impact
+3–4%
Based on independent county-level research, not a project-specific guarantee.

Net property tax revenue, phased build-in

Annual net (bars) and cumulative net (line) over 10 years, after abatement

Jobs over time

Construction ramp-up and wind-down, then permanent roles

What independent research finds

Brookings Institution (2026): analysis of ~770 U.S. data centers against BLS county employment and wage data (2003-2024).

Wages rise ~3-4% for both existing and new local workers, a real, measured income effect across ~770 facilities.

Total private employment grows ~4–5% over five to six years in counties receiving their first large facility.

No significant change in home prices. The evidence does not support a housing-value bump, and we do not claim one.

Industry estimates overstate jobs ~3x. Effects are largest for hyperscale campuses and clusters; colocation alone is more modest.

How these numbers are calculated

  • Taxable property value = investment × taxable-asset share. Illustrative; not the county's official appraisal.
  • Assessed digest value = taxable FMV × 40% (Georgia standard assessment ratio, O.C.G.A. § 48-5-7).
  • Gross property tax = assessed value × millage ÷ 1,000. County, school, and city millage are computed and displayed separately.
  • Phased build-in: 1/N of taxable value enters the digest each buildout year; equipment depreciation applies to each cohort from its service year.
  • Equipment value decline uses an illustrative 5% annual assumption, with approximately 75% of taxable value modeled as equipment (consistent with Carl Vinson findings: ~$1.8B equipment on a ~$2.3B campus). Actual assessments depend on asset type, age, and county appraisal practices.
  • Net collections = gross tax less modeled abatement/PILOT reduction. Real deals range from ~18% (Carl Vinson representative complex) to ~50% declining over 10 years (Clayton County, 2026).
  • Peak construction jobs = MW × 1.3 (range 0.7–2.0/MW per Hamm Institute workforce benchmarks, 2025).
  • Permanent jobs = MW × 0.25 FTE (range 0.15–0.35/MW; hyperscale >100 MW can run on 20–30 staff per 100 MW). AWS's $11B Georgia investment projects ~550 jobs as an order-of-magnitude check.
Get a tailored projection for your site

We will plug in your county's exact rates and site details.

Illustrative only. This tool produces rough estimates for discussion purposes, not a guarantee, appraisal, or offer. Results use simplified, adjustable assumptions and public data: Carl Vinson Institute of Government / Georgia Department of Audits & Accounts (2025–26); Brookings Institution (2026); Hamm Institute Data Center Workforce Forecast (2025); UGA Selig Center (2026); and Georgia PSC. Actual taxable value, revenue, jobs, and timing vary widely by project, facility type, power availability, water and zoning requirements, depreciation schedules, market conditions, local approval, and any negotiated payment-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOT) agreement. Tax figures shown are gross and net of modeled incentives; they are not appraisals. Georgia assesses property at 40% of fair market value, and county, school, and city millage are set separately by each jurisdiction. Georgia exempts certain data center equipment and materials from sales tax under O.C.G.A. § 48-8-3(68.1); the local benefit modeled here is property tax, not sales tax. This is not legal, tax, financial, or investment advice; verify with your county and a qualified professional before relying on any figure.