NC Changes Tax Laws for Apple, Inc.

June 5, 2009

Because of the tight economy, many state and local governments are bending their standards and laws to create new jobs for residents. Recently, the state of North Carolina made an exception for Apple, Inc. It offered to provide a tax break in exchange for an agreement to invest $1 billion in a rural area to build a data center.

The center would be used to store information necessary to Internet traffic. The facility would be climate-controlled and use large amounts of power and water. Though construction of the site would create hundreds of jobs, the initial full-time workforce would require less than one hundred workers.

Some believe that local small businesses could profit from the construction by providing services to the giant center. For this, the state is willing to give Apple a tax break worth approximately $46 million in ten years. This provides an incentive for Apple to build in North Carolina.

Facilities like that proposed by Apple are appearing all over the country. Google recently built one in the Western Carolina foothills. Because the state is so generous with tax cuts, many Internet-based companies are drawn to it.