[twoodfin]

Property tax is the dominant method for local governments to capture the value of hosted commercial activity.

You don’t need a high rate to capture plenty of value out of a $multi-billion data center.

The problem is mostly on the electricity side, with highly regulated utilities not prepared (on the regulator or regulated sides) to respond to such a large shock to demand. Utilities are typically regulated at the state level.

[kotaKat]

They keep negotiating payments-in-lieu-of-taxes to dodge fair tax rates and grab special treatment, so we do see a loss in value there over decade(s) in many cases.

[twoodfin]

Sure, there’s plenty of places where you could plausibly build a data center, so the leverage that localities have to insist on high tax rates is limited.

[inigyou]

Then it can't be that bad to move it to another state, right?

[twoodfin]

Nope. Northern Virginia communities, for example, have seen significant budgetary wins from data center buildout over the past decade.

[inigyou]

Those previously completed projects in NV are completely unlike the ones currently being proposed and protested

[twoodfin]

What does that have to do with the question of how they’re taxed?

[gruez]

>so we do see a loss in value there over decade(s) in many cases.

Source? Maybe it was the case 10 years ago, but today with all the datacenter backlash it's hard to imagine anyone giving sweetheart deals to them.

[cogman10]

10 years ago? Several states have 0% property taxes on the books for data centers, Utah being one of them.

That's a big reason for the Box Elder data center.

https://gpuleaseindex.com/incentives/utah

[gruez]

>https://gpuleaseindex.com/incentives/utah

That page has conflicting information. The top text says "Property tax abatement: Limited", which implies tax breaks are limited, but then the bullet point says "Property Tax: Limited", which implies the opposite. Moreover the site doesn't cite any sources so you can't even verify yourself.