Google Tops Property Taxpayer List in Santa Clara County

Tech companies such as Google provide the lion’s share of commercial property taxpayers in Santa Clara County.

Google leads the list of the 10 largest commercial taxpayers on an assessed value of $9.54 billion, the San Jose Mercury News reported, citing a report from the county Assessor’s Office.

The other big firms represent a who’s who of the nation’s tech sector, including Apple ($2.88 billion), Apple unit Campus Holdings ($5 billion), Cisco Technology ($1.56 billion), Applied Materials ($1.41 billion), Intel ($1.32 billion) LinkedIn ($1.24 billion) and Planetary Ventures, owned by Google parent Alphabet ($1.56 billion).

Non-tech companies Pacific Gas & Electric ($2.99 billion) and Westfield Malls ($1.53 billion) also made the top 10 list.

Google shelled out $117 million in taxes, or 1.5 percent of its $9.54 billion in assessed property value, according to the San Jose Spotlight, which also cited the Assessor’s report. PG&E followed with a tax bill of $86.8 million.

The report shows an unprecedented 9.6 percent rise in business property value to $47 billion, second to only Los Angeles County, largely because of inflation and the rising cost of acquisitions.

The property tax roll in Santa Clara County, which includes secured real estate and unsecured property such as equipment, rose to an all-time high of $661.2 billion as of Jan. 1, the Assessor’s Office reported.

The value of the county’s property tax roll increased 6.7 percent this year from 2022, according to the agency. That’s a slight slowdown in the annual increase compared to last year.

Santa Clara County properties had a combined assessed value of nearly $620 billion for 2022, which was an increase of 7 percent from 2021, when the property tax roll totaled almost $577 billion, the Assessor’s Office reported.

On the downside, a sharp decline in the number of properties that have lost value this year equals $4.7 billion, which the report largely attributes to residential properties. The number of properties that declined in value rose this year to 19,325, from 2,595 last year, according to the Assessor.

Aside from a brief uptick in 2020 during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, this is the first time the county has seen such a large decline since the financial crisis of 2008, County Assessor Larry Stone told the Spotlight.

“The local economy and real estate markets have largely for the last nine years, (except during) the Covid year, been strong,” Stone, the county assessor for 29 years, told the newspaper.

“I don’t think economically the Fed’s definition of a recession is in existence yet … (but this year) has a very strong opportunity to be the worst year in assessment roll growth that we’ve had.”

— Dana Bartholomew