3 ms·

How is spending $24 million a year on taxes not evidence that they lobbied, and received tax breaks and exemptions? The reason they picked that location was be

How is spending $24 million a year on taxes not evidence that they lobbied, and received tax breaks and exemptions? The reason they picked that location was because they get reduced rates. 50% off energy taxes. Reduced property taxes. I could go on. https://siteselection.com/how-illinois-built-a-dream-home-for-data-centers/ https://siteselection.com/how-illinois-built-a-dream-home-fo... Unless your arguing an example of a data centre that only received a tax break rather than exemption?

AnthonyMouse 2mo ago
Property taxes are ordinarily a percentage of the value of the land and structures because in most cases it has some approximation to services consumed. A building with twice as many condo units might require twice as many police, create twice as much traffic, etc. A large data center could plausibly be sitting on a piece of land worth a million dollars and then have a billion dollars worth of equipment in it, but still not require any more police officers or traffic lanes etc. than the million dollar piece of land sitting next to it. It might even require less. It's easy for a town to come out ahead from that even after providing significant tax breaks. When you have something consuming the same unit of services while having an assessed value of 1000x the typical amount, what percentage tax break they would have to get before the government isn't coming out ahead?
- f4c39012 2mo ago
  You're missing the point. Towns come out ahead when the people living there come out ahead. I'm not arguing with your math, but your math is also a straight line to a town with no people at all being better. Towns are for _people_.
  - mlrtime 2mo ago
    It's for the people if they are stuck with a negative tax base and no way out. You either expand tax base or shrink it. A DC [can be] a good stop gap as it increases tax base for the city while not requiring additional services that cost tax dollars. Either that, or everyone's property taxes go up.
  - AnthonyMouse 2mo ago
    Where do you get the premise that the people living there don't come out ahead? You have something which, if it moves in, would pay more in property that than it consumes in services. Even at a significant discount to the ordinary property tax rate. If the net benefit after the discount is +$1M/year to the local coffers then the local people are benefiting in that amount, and it's easy to see numbers like that even after offering significant tax incentives.
itsmek 2mo ago
You're shifting the goalposts from an earlier comment that claimed they would be "all drain". But that's ok, maybe you could compare that money to what a strip mall would provide in tax? I would find that analysis more convincing than just saying "reduced rate therefore bad", and would probably more accurately illuminate why localities make the decisions that they do.

AnthonyMouse 2mo ago

Property taxes are ordinarily a percentage of the value of the land and structures because in most cases it has some approximation to services consumed. A building with twice as many condo units might require twice as many police, create twice as much traffic, etc. A large data center could plausibly be sitting on a piece of land worth a million dollars and then have a billion dollars worth of equipment in it, but still not require any more police officers or traffic lanes etc. than the million dollar piece of land sitting next to it. It might even require less. It's easy for a town to come out ahead from that even after providing significant tax breaks. When you have something consuming the same unit of services while having an assessed value of 1000x the typical amount, what percentage tax break they would have to get before the government isn't coming out ahead?

f4c39012 2mo ago
You're missing the point. Towns come out ahead when the people living there come out ahead. I'm not arguing with your math, but your math is also a straight line to a town with no people at all being better. Towns are for _people_.
- mlrtime 2mo ago
  It's for the people if they are stuck with a negative tax base and no way out. You either expand tax base or shrink it. A DC [can be] a good stop gap as it increases tax base for the city while not requiring additional services that cost tax dollars. Either that, or everyone's property taxes go up.
- AnthonyMouse 2mo ago
  Where do you get the premise that the people living there don't come out ahead? You have something which, if it moves in, would pay more in property that than it consumes in services. Even at a significant discount to the ordinary property tax rate. If the net benefit after the discount is +$1M/year to the local coffers then the local people are benefiting in that amount, and it's easy to see numbers like that even after offering significant tax incentives.

itsmek 2mo ago

You're shifting the goalposts from an earlier comment that claimed they would be "all drain". But that's ok, maybe you could compare that money to what a strip mall would provide in tax? I would find that analysis more convincing than just saying "reduced rate therefore bad", and would probably more accurately illuminate why localities make the decisions that they do.