Ad valorem tax assessment; direct DOR to assign separate industrial multiplier for commercial solar and wind facilities.
Summary
SB 3166 amends Mississippi’s ad valorem tax assessment law to require the Department of Revenue, when preparing its annual table of inflation factors for industrial property, to treat commercial solar and wind facilities as a separate industrial category. The bill also directs the department to use an inflation factor of 1.000 for those facilities in any year when Marshall Valuation Service does not provide a specific factor. The change is placed within Section 27-35-50 of the Mississippi Code, which governs how assessors determine true value for property tax purposes.
The bill does not overhaul the broader property tax framework, but it creates a specific valuation rule for commercial renewable energy facilities. By separating solar and wind projects from other industrial property, it is intended to give the Department of Revenue a clearer basis for calculating assessed value and to avoid applying a generic industrial multiplier when no specialized factor is available. The act takes effect July 1, 2025.
Impact
The bill amends Mississippi Code Section 27-35-50 to add a new subsection requiring the Department of Revenue to classify commercial solar and wind facilities separately in its annual industrial inflation-factor table. This affects property tax administration for renewable energy projects by directing how assessors and the Department calculate ad valorem values for those facilities. If no Marshall Valuation Service factor exists for a given year, the department must default to 1.000, which may stabilize valuations for those assets relative to other industrial property.
Sentiment
The available voting history shows strong bipartisan support and no recorded opposition: the Senate passed the bill 51-0 and the House passed it 118-0. That suggests the measure was broadly viewed as a technical or administrative clarification rather than a controversial policy change. No committee transcript is available, so the public discussion reflected in the record is limited, but the unanimous votes indicate general agreement on the need for a separate valuation category for commercial solar and wind facilities.
Contention
There is no documented floor or committee debate in the provided record, and the bill passed both chambers unanimously, so no formal contention is evident. The only potentially sensitive issue implied by the text is the tax treatment of commercial renewable energy projects, particularly whether they should be valued differently from other industrial property and whether a default inflation factor of 1.000 could affect assessed values. However, the voting record does not show any organized opposition to those provisions.