Comment by palmotea
2 hours ago
> Why don't they pay much in taxes? hyperscalers are pretty profitable.
I wouldn't be surprised if those profits are re-imagined as costs paid to some entity in a tax-haven.
Also there's different kinds of taxes. IIRC, local communities get their revenue from sales taxes and property taxes. A data center doesn't sell anything, so they probably get zero from that. I don't really know how they'd factor into property taxes, because they're a blight and I don't know how the locality would assess their value without comparable transactions.
Many jurisdictions have lower property taxes for certain kinds of industrial/commercial zoning in the name of bringing in jobs, etc. You sometimes see clusters of businesses at border areas of jurisdictions for this reason. Sometimes it's other advantages. Bottled water companies often take advantage of cheaper municipal water for "industrial" use, for example.