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Comment by ianm218

3 hours ago

Italian farmers pay effectively 0% taxes on land and the areas are quite poor. Data centers on the other hand pay lots of taxes.

Why would they ban productive uses of land?

7 comments

ianm218

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conception  3 hours ago

Obviously because they care more about things than just making money.

  • shlant  2 hours ago

    > Obviously because they care more about things than just making money.

    why should someone be banned from selling their land if they want?

    • ndsipa_pomu  2 hours ago

      The concept of land ownership is somewhat flawed (how can you "own" something that existed before you and will outlast you) and there's a finite amount of land available for various purposes, so for the benefit of humanity/civilisation it can make sense to ensure that land with certain properties is kept for the purpose of growing food or for hosting particular ecosystems (e.g. rivers).

      Even if it's not agricultural land, there can be strategically important pieces of land that a country will insist cannot be sold to organisations that are opposed to the values of that country. However, in those cases, it might make more sense for the state to make compulsory purchases of that land.

notrealyme123  2 hours ago

That's very black and white.

They don't pay "lots" of taxes. They pay taxes for the two engineers and 8 janitors working there.

  • ianm218  19 minutes ago

    I can't say I'm overly familiar with Italy's tax regime (besides googling and confirming they effectively don't tax agricultural land) but the large Meta data center is paying >$22 million in taxes to a county with ~2,000 people[1]. In Northern Virginia they re collecting over a billion dollars a year in taxes from data centers [2]. Allegedly that reduces household tax burden by ~$6k per year.

    I have no relation to the data center industry at all, it is just weird to see the discourse around it be so divorced from reality. There is a commenter below me saying that land ownership is illegitimate in the first place in order to justify banning data centers.

    Is your understanding that the only tax burden on data centers is via income to local employees?

    [1]. https://www.shreveportbossieradvocate.com/business/meta-data... [2]. https://progresschamber.org/insights/data-centers-cut-proper...