The answer came in the final minutes of a routine quarterly report. The Trustee said the company has not been late, and that the current year's bills have only just gone out.
MEMPHIS, August 19, 2026 - Shelby County Trustee Regina Morrison Newman told commissioners that revenue on the three properties already owned by xAI is $27.7 million, an amount her office anticipates collecting, and that the company has not been late on its taxes.
The exchange came at the end of the Trustee's fourth quarter report to Committee 13, Audit, on the last item before the committee closed.
The question
Commissioner Britney Thornton, closing a series of questions about collection programs, said the Commission has been talking about data centers and asked whether the data centers have actually paid their property taxes, or whether any are delinquent.
The Trustee answered in three parts. The 2025 taxes are mostly paid and that cycle has passed. For 2026, electronic bills had already gone out and mailed paper bills were scheduled to go out by the end of August. And the revenue on the three properties already owned by xAI is $27.7 million, which her office anticipates coming in.
Asked to confirm that the company had paid its fiscal year 2025 taxes, she said that was correct.
What the figure does and does not establish
The record supports a specific and limited set of facts. The Trustee stated a $27.7 million revenue figure attached to three properties, described it as anticipated rather than collected, and said the taxpayer has not been late. She did not state a tax year for the $27.7 million, did not identify the three properties, and was not asked whether other data center properties in the county are owned by different entities or carry separate parcels.
No one at the meeting asked how the $27.7 million relates to any incentive, payment-in-lieu-of-tax agreement or abatement, or whether the figure is net or gross of any such arrangement. The Trustee's report to the committee includes reports on expiring payments in lieu of taxes, which she noted continue to accumulate at the end of the document, but that section was not discussed in connection with this answer.
The context the committee already had
Minutes earlier in the same report, the Trustee had told the committee that the county's overall 2025 collection rate reached 97.69 percent, a record, and that total receipts came in at 101.5 percent of forecast.
The committee voted five to nothing to receive and file the report.
What happens next
The full Commission received and filed the Trustee's fourth quarter report on the consent agenda on Monday, August 24, 2026, on 12 aye votes. No commissioner returned to the data center collections question at that meeting. The Trustee said paper tax bills for 2026 were scheduled to be mailed by the end of August.
The collection of those bills falls to a different officeholder. Joseph Lee III has since been sworn in as Shelby County Trustee. Nothing in the record establishes whether the anticipated $27.7 million has been received.
