What puzzles me: if you focus on tax revenue per plot area/width, dense cities have a huge advantage - not even considering economies of scale and stuff like sa

What puzzles me: if you focus on tax revenue per plot area/width, dense cities have a huge advantage - not even considering economies of scale and stuff like savings for heating/AC. And yet dense cities tend to have much higher cost of living and run huge deficits. How can this be explained?