Data center laws in Montana
1 rule at the state level: 1 statute. Each says what it requires in the words of its text, with the effective date the text gives and a link to the bill or order.
Last verified
- Rules on the record
- 1
- Passed
- 1
- Statutes
- 1
Rules in Montana
- H.B. 424 Statute
Revise taxes for class 17 data center property
Passed
H.B. 424 of the 2025 Regular Session was signed on May 13, 2025. The legislature titles it: Revise taxes for class 17 data center property.
What it requires
Where power from a generator owned by a qualified data center is sold to a public utility or an electric cooperative, the price may not exceed the cost of production, which the act defines to take in the generator's capital cost, depreciation, the wages and benefits of the people running it, fuel, operating supplies, utilities and contracted services, and to leave out corporate...
Where power from a generator owned by a qualified data center is sold to a public utility or an electric cooperative, the price may not exceed the cost of production, which the act defines to take in the generator's capital cost, depreciation, the wages and benefits of the people running it, fuel, operating supplies, utilities and contracted services, and to leave out corporate administration, travel and corporate legal services. The buying utility or cooperative may audit the generator's operating costs once a year at its own expense. A qualified data center is a facility on contiguous parcels in single ownership of at least 300,000 square feet costing at least $150 million, or of at least 25,000 square feet of new or expanded area costing at least $50 million over 48 months. A facility still under construction takes the class seventeen classification only where the taxpayer certifies before March 1 of the first year claimed that it will meet those tests within two years, and onsite generation counts as used onsite only where at least 80 percent of production is consumed there, metered at the point of generation and certified each year.
A law here is one statute, utility commission order, tariff, tax rule, moratorium or bill at the state level. What it requires is taken from the text, never summarized from coverage; a date the text does not give is left empty. Its status is one of five, defined on the laws index. The dated events beneath a law are the scorecard entries that cite it.
Bills tracked
No official summary on file for any of these 6 bills; each links to the legislature's page for the text.
Failed or died 3
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Study resolution on data centers
H.J. 46 Died at adjournment
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Generally revise digital asset mining and data center ratemaking laws
H.B. 263 Died at adjournment
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Establish the Montana data center development act
H.B. 877 Died at adjournment
6 bills tracked in Montana; 2025 Regular Session, legislature adjourned. No data center bills found as of October 26, 2026. Search terms: data center, data centre, large load, hyperscale, computing facility, server farm, high load factor (indirect), energy intensive facility (indirect), large electric load (indirect), digital asset mining (indirect), cryptocurrency mining (indirect), qualified technology facility (indirect), colocation (indirect), moratorium (with another term), sales tax exemption (with another term). The search on LegiScan. (opens in a new tab)
Bill data from LegiScan (opens in a new tab), licensed CC BY 4.0 (opens in a new tab). The record chooses the bills, writes each stage in its own words and cites the legislature's own page for every bill. LegiScan is credited as the finder; the citation is the legislature's own page. How bills and votes are recorded.
Cite this page
Data Center Record, "Data center laws in Montana", https://datacenterrecord.org/laws/mt. Data: Data Center Record, datacenterrecord.org, CC BY-NC 4.0.
The structured rows are CC BY-NC 4.0. Link to this page; that is what turns a reuse into a citation. Prose stays under copyright.
