# Act 548 (2025) Act 548 of the 2025 Arkansas General Assembly is the **data-center qualification statute** that **lowered the investment threshold from $500M to $100M** for state sales-tax-exemption-eligible data-center projects. The statute amends and supersedes earlier framework from Act 758 of 2023 (the "Data Center Sales Tax Incentive" referenced in the [[April 2026 FAQ Project Stratus|April 2026 Project Stratus FAQ]]). Together, Act 758 of 2023 and Act 548 of 2025 established the modern Arkansas qualified-data-center incentive regime, of which the [[2025-04 Conway City Council Approves Project Stratus MOU|Project Stratus MOU]]'s 65% / 30-year property-tax abatement is a project-level implementation. ## How it appears in the corpus - **[[April 2026 FAQ Project Stratus|FAQ Q1]]**: "After Arkansas passed a Data Center Sales Tax Incentive in 2023, national interest spiked." This is the 2023 predecessor; Act 548 of 2025 amended the framework. - **[[April 2026 FAQ Project Stratus|FAQ Q8]]**: "Yes. The 50 jobs and $1 billion investment mirrors the minimum requirement for the state sales tax incentive." The $1 billion figure here is project-specific (the announced Forgelight investment), not the statutory minimum (which Act 548 set at $100M). - The wiki's `Home.md` references "the Act 548 tax-exemption framework" as the foundational statute that drove the data-center buildout investigation. ## Stakeholders - [[Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration]] (DFA) — administers the program: Act 548 moved qualification applications from AEDC to DFA, and DFA administers the sales-tax exemption operationally (see the Primary-source record below). - [[Arkansas Economic Development Commission]] (AEDC) — retains only the "positive cost-benefit analysis" prerequisite under Act 548. - Hyperscale developers — beneficiaries of the sales-tax exemption. - Arkansas General Assembly — adopted Act 548 of 2025 lowering the threshold. ## Timeline - **2023** — Act 758 of 2023 adopted the original Arkansas Data Center Sales Tax Incentive at a $500M investment threshold. - **2025** — Act 548 of 2025 lowered the threshold to $100M and amended the qualification criteria. - **2025-04-01** — Project Stratus MOU references the incentive structure implicitly (the 50-job / $1B project scale aligns with Act 758/Act 548 minimums). ## Primary-source record (Tier 2, archived 2026-06-04) The Act 548 enrolled text, its DFA fiscal note, and the bill's legislative record were archived 2026-06-04 via the LegiScan and Arkansas General Assembly connectors: - **The threshold drop, verbatim.** Act 548 § 26-52-456(a)(4)(B)(i) strikes "five hundred million dollars ($500,000,000)" and inserts "one hundred million dollars ($100,000,000)" as the minimum qualified investment for a "qualified data center" ([Act 548 enrolled act, Tier 2](../../web%20archive/2026-06-04/arkleg.state.ar.us/act-548-of-2025.md), p. 3). DFA's fiscal note independently confirms it "reduces the qualified investment requirement for a qualified data center from $500 million to $100 million" ([DFA fiscal note, Tier 2](../../web%20archive/2026-06-04/arkleg.state.ar.us/hb1444-act-548-dfa-fiscal-note.md)). - **A new $2B "qualified large data center" tier.** Act 548 § 26-52-456(a)(7) newly defines a multi-site (two or more nonadjacent, fiber-connected locations) "qualified large data center" requiring a qualified investment of at least $2,000,000,000 within ten years and at least $3,000,000 in annual compensation. - **Electricity is exempt.** § 26-52-456(b)(4) exempts "Electricity used by a qualified data center or a qualified large data center" from the gross-receipts and compensating-use tax; the amended "data center equipment" definition expressly reaches electricity transformation/generation/distribution/storage equipment "including without limitation a substation, generator, ... and backup generator" (§ 26-52-456(a)(1)(C)). - **Administration moved to DFA.** Applications shift from the [[Arkansas Economic Development Commission]] to the Department of Finance and Administration; AEDC retains only the "positive cost-benefit analysis" prerequisite. - **Sponsors and votes.** Sponsored by Rep. Aaron Pilkington (R, HD-045) and Sen. Jonathan Dismang (R, SD-018). Passed House 71-17 (2025-03-10), Senate 24-4 (2025-03-31), House concurrence 76-9 (2025-04-07); approved 2025-04-10 ([HB 1444 legislative record, Tier 2](../../web%20archive/2026-06-04/arkleg.state.ar.us/hb1444-act-548-legislative-record.md)). Sen. Dismang also sponsored the [[Generating Arkansas Jobs Act (GAJA) rider|Generating Arkansas Jobs Act (Act 373)]] the same session — a single Senate sponsor behind both the cost-socializing rider statute and the data-center tax-exemption expansion. - **DFA scored it "Revenue neutral."** Despite a five-fold threshold reduction plus a new electricity-tax exemption, the DFA fiscal note's stated fiscal impact is "Revenue neutral." DFA also noted it had "no process" for sales-and-use-tax exemption incentive programs and would need a new six-position office (~$468,251/yr) to administer the program, and flagged that the bill contained no requirement that large-data-center electricity be separately metered. ## Notes The Conway Project Stratus MOU's 50 jobs and $1 billion announced investment numbers are described in the [[April 2026 FAQ Project Stratus|FAQ Q8]] as "[mirroring] the minimum requirement for the state sales tax incentive" — implying the project is sized to clear the statutory floor. Per FAQ Q9, "If the company failed to meet the minimum requirement for the state sales tax incentive, they would be subject to sales tax on their electricity. The project would not survive those conditions." The incentive is therefore project-load-bearing: the project is sized to qualify, and would not be economically viable without the exemption. This wiki has not yet ingested the AEDC FOIA productions that would document Act 548-qualification certifications for specific projects (including Forgelight Ventures, [[AVAIO Digital Partners|AVAIO]], [[Willowbend Capital, LLC]], [[Google LLC|Google]] via Altitude Capital, etc.). The AEDC FOIA is open as of the FOIA-2026-126 ingest; see `Home.md` for current FOIA status. The Act 548 of 2025 statute text, DFA fiscal note, and legislative record are now archived as Tier-2 records (see the Primary-source record section above, archived 2026-06-04). The earlier Act 758 of 2023 framework remains to be archived from arkleg.state.ar.us. The relationship between Act 548 (statewide sales-tax exemption on electricity) and the Conway-specific Act 9 IRB (local property-tax abatement) is that **they stack**: a data center can be both Act 548-qualified (for state sales-tax exemption on electricity) and Act 9-financed (for local property-tax exemption). The combination is the architecture of the Project Stratus financial-incentive stack. The [[April 2026 FAQ Project Stratus|FAQ]] confirms both are in play for Project Stratus.