Local municipalities collect this and often get tricked into not collecting it via agreements to host it in or near their town for multiple year agreements. Also the assessed value of the property may not come anywhere near the costs of increased electricity demand, water usage and noise pollution problems. For locals
Their is typically high paying jobs in factories but these places dont employ a large staff beyond construction. It a tough spaces.
Property tax is often assessed on capital equipment owned by a business as well as real estate. So while the real estate may be of limited value, the hosted machines could drive significant tax revenue as AI machines are spendy.
You're right though, that municipalities often waive taxes to woo big projects.
Yeah but i think server farms are tricky to access because they have accountants to argue about depreciating CPUs, second hand CPU deppreication is enormous so its possible to wiggle the numbers down. Not to zero but the challenge is that you have to recoup not just hthe land value but the value related all the infrastructure and resource drain this type of business does which is very non-trivial
