Report Says State Property Taxes Overvalue Data Center Servers

Oct 19, 2026
National Taxpayers Union says state depreciation schedules can value data center servers far above their market price, increasing property tax bills for operators.

National Taxpayers Union said in a press release that many state property tax rules overvalue data center equipment. Its research says depreciation schedules designed for manufacturing machinery do not reflect servers that often become obsolete after three years.

Florida values a server at 56% of its original cost after three years. Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Oregon and Washington value it at 40%, even when its market value is close to zero, according to the research.

The group says these valuations increase property taxes for data centers and can raise hosting costs for customers. It recommends that states change tangible personal property tax rules or stop taxing such equipment.

We hope you enjoyed this article

Consider subscribing to one of our newsletters like AI Policy Brief, Silicon Brief or Daily AI Brief.

Also, consider following us on social media:

AI Safety & Regulation AI Chips & Datacenters AI Brief AI Brief (X)
Free newsletter

AI Policy Brief

Weekly report on AI regulations, safety standards, government policies, and compliance requirements worldwide.

AI Token Webinar

Whitepaper

Tensordyne Napier: What If One Rack Could Do the Work of Nine?

Tensordyne

This Tensordyne whitepaper presents Napier, an inference-focused AI processor and rack-scale system based on the company’s TDN Math logarithmic number system. It examines infrastructure requirements for large mixture-of-experts and agentic models, compares major inference architecture approaches, and details the TDN AIP processor, TDN72 pod, TDN Link fabric, and Napier Ultra configuration. The paper reports simulation-based performance, cost, and accuracy-validation results, including Tensordyne’s projected comparison of one Napier rack with a nine-rack Nvidia Rubin plus Groq deployment; the chip is reported as taped out and in fabrication.

Read more

You may also like

Free, six days a week

Daily AI Brief: the AI news that matters, in your inbox.