Home Depot tax break approved
The Development Authority of Cobb County on Tuesday approved millions of dollars in property tax breaks for Home Depot, which plans on building a new internet technology center in Marietta and investing in its corporate headquarters.
The 6-0 vote did not include Karen Hallacy, a board member appointed by Cobb Commissioner Bob Ott who had voiced concern over the incentives.
Home Depot officials have said the company will invest $200 million over the next decade in annual installments of approximately $20 million. The company wants 10-year property tax breaks attached to each investment, meaning it could receive a tax abatement every year for the next decade.
The first investment will be to refinance $23 million in debt, which itself benefited from a property tax abatement, said Nelson Geter, the development authority’s executive director.
Mike LaFerle, vice president of real estate and construction for the company, said the total benefit to Home Depot will be about $3 million over the duration of the agreement. He also said both the county government and the school district will benefit from increased tax receipts during the same time frame.
Property tax abatements work on a sliding scale: 100 percent of the tax is waived in the first year; 90 percent in the second year; 80 percent in the third year; and so on.
Company officials have said the new IT center will create more than 500 new jobs, and preserve more than 600 that currently operate out of the company’s Cumberland headquarters.
It’s the first time that structure of tax abatement has been granted in Cobb.
Property tax abatements cost school systems and municipal government revenue in the short term, but the argument for them is that those governments then receive higher tax receipts once the abatement runs its course.
Hallacy said she was concerned that the development authority was going to grant abatements 10 years into the future, and that some of the investment would be in technology that depreciates in value very quickly.
About the Author
Dan Klepal is editor of the local government team, supervising nine reporters covering county and municipal governments and metro Atlanta. Klepal came to the AJC in 2012, after a long career covering city halls in Cincinnati and Louisville, Ky. He has covered Gwinnett and Cobb counties before spending three years on the investigative team.
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