Texas city aims to attract Samsung chip plant with property tax breaks

The city of Taylor, Texas, is planning on offering Samsung large property tax breaks if the company chooses to establish a new $17 billion chip plant in the municipality.

The city is competing with Austin, as well as Arizona and New York, in a bid to convince Samsung to establish a $17 billion chip plant that could bring around 1,800 new jobs to the region, as reported by Reuters. So far, the other sites haven’t disclosed any potential tax breaks they would give the tech giant.

The proposed resolution details that for the land Samsung will use, it will be offered a grant equivalent to 92.5% of assessed property tax for 10 years, 90% for the following 10 years, and then 85% in the 10 years after that. Additionally, the city will also potentially offer a 92.5% tax waiver on new property built on the site for 10 years and the repayment of development review costs.

The resolution will be considered on Wednesday 8 September by the Taylor City Council and Williamson County Commissioners.

The site in Taylor is situated around 25 miles from Austin and measures 4.81 square kilometres in size, which is much bigger than the proposed Austin site.

In May, South Korea announced it would introduce bigger tax breaks and 1 trillion won (£627 million) in loans across its manufacturing industry to try and alleviate the global chip crisis. Tax breaks increased from 3% to 6% and the change applied to “key strategic technology”, like semiconductors, and was set to affect the country’s first and second-largest manufacturers, Samsung and SK Hynix respectively.

Following this news, Samsung announced it would increase its investments in the country from 133 trillion to 171 trillion (£107 billion) through 2030. It hoped that this would accelerate research of cutting-edge semiconductor process technology and the construction of a new production facility.

In May, it was reported that TSMC was set to build five more chip plants in Arizona, in addition to the $12 billion factory it was already planning to build in the state. The Arizona project represents a significant expansion of the company’s plans to shift its manufacturing to the US, as it currently has most of its plants in Taiwan, with others in Washington and China. It was reported that the expansion was in response to a request from the US government.