Indiana Data Center Assessments 2026: LEAP, AWS, and the Hyperscaler Tax Question

Indiana has emerged in the last few years as one of the leading Midwest data center destinations. Meta's campus in the LEAP district in Lebanon (Boone County), Amazon Web Services' $11 billion New Carlisle campus in St. Joseph County, Sabey Data Centers' campus in Indianapolis's Decatur Township, and a wave of other proposals represent billions of dollars of new investment in the host counties. Not every proposal lands: Google withdrew its proposed Franklin Township campus in Indianapolis in September 2025, before a City-County Council rezoning vote.

The catch: data centers are unusual property tax citizens. Much of their investment is personal property (servers, network gear, racks, cooling, electrical infrastructure) rather than real property (the building itself). The assessment treatment of these facilities, and the abatements and exemptions they receive, is novel and politically contested.

Why data center assessments are different

A traditional warehouse carries most of its value in the building and land, with modest personal property (forklifts, racking, computers).

A hyperscale data center adds a specialized building (redundant power, cooling, fire suppression) plus a very large and constantly refreshed base of personal property: servers, network equipment, UPS systems, generators, and cooling infrastructure.

The personal property is the story. Indiana taxes business personal property under a depreciation schedule set by rule, with classification rules and exemptions. SB 1 raised the threshold for the general business personal property exemption: for the 2026 assessment date and later, a taxpayer whose business personal property in a county has a total acquisition cost under $2 million is exempt (IC 6-1.1-3-7.2(d)). Data centers vastly exceed that threshold, so their equipment is taxable unless a deal-specific abatement or exemption covers it.

The abatement question

Most Indiana data center deals have included substantial tax incentives as part of the site selection package. Three tools do most of the work:

Real property abatement under IC 6-1.1-12.1: a deduction on the building, on a schedule the designating body sets. Most schedules may not exceed 10 years (IC 6-1.1-12.1-17).
Personal property abatement under IC 6-1.1-12.1-4.5: "new information technology equipment" is eligible, and an enhanced schedule for new business personal property can run up to 20 years (IC 6-1.1-12.1-18).
Enterprise information technology equipment exemption under IC 6-1.1-10-44: a county or municipal fiscal body can agree to exempt servers, routers, data-center-class networking, and backup power equipment for a business that invests at least $25 million at the facility and pays an average wage of at least 125% of the county average. The agreement sets how long the exemption lasts.

The designating body is the local fiscal body: the county council for unincorporated areas, or the city or town council inside a municipality. In Marion County it is the Metropolitan Development Commission. Recent deals show how different the packages are:

St. Joseph County (AWS New Carlisle): the county redevelopment commission, commissioners, and council approved a 10-year, 50% real property abatement and an 85% enterprise information technology exemption on the data center's personal property in August 2024.
Lebanon (Meta, LEAP district): the Lebanon City Council approved a 10-year, 50% real property abatement and a 35-year, 100% personal property tax abatement, with Meta making a $1.5 million annual community impact payment.
Marion County (Sabey, Decatur Township): the Metropolitan Development Commission approved a 10-year real property abatement and a 15-year abatement on equipment in September 2026.

The political tension: incentives are how Indiana competes for data center deals against other states. But abated or exempt value is, by definition, value not paying its full share of local taxes.

Note

Incentives are time-limited, but not all on the same clock. Real property abatements generally run no more than 10 years, enhanced personal property abatements up to 20, and an enterprise IT exemption runs as long as its agreement says. Meta's personal property abatement in Lebanon runs 35 years. Read the actual resolution and agreement before assuming when a facility becomes fully taxable.

What hyperscalers actually pay

There is no reliable "typical" year-by-year tax profile for a hyperscale campus. What a facility pays depends on its real property AV, the depreciated value of its equipment under the state pooling rules, the abatement percentages and exemption terms in its specific deal, the local tax rate, and the 3% circuit-breaker cap on nonresidential real property and personal property. Deals as different as AWS's 85% equipment exemption and Meta's 35-year, 100% personal property abatement produce very different tax streams from similar investment. Any projection should be built from the facility's actual resolution, agreement, and Form 103 data, not a generic schedule.

The LEAP district specifics

The LEAP (Limitless Exploration/Advanced Pace) district in Lebanon, Boone County, is the highest-profile Indiana economic development project, anchored by Lilly's $9 billion active pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturing campus. Meta's data center campus, approved by the Lebanon City Council in November 2024 with the incentives described above, is the district's major data center project.

For LEAP-area data centers, the incentive terms drive the tax picture:

The real property abatement follows the schedule in the city's resolution (for Meta, 50% for 10 years)
The personal property abatement can run far longer than the real property abatement (for Meta, 100% for 35 years)
Community impact payments negotiated as part of the deal are separate from property taxes
Later phases bring additional investment onto the rolls as they are built

LEAP also required substantial infrastructure investment in water, sewer, and electrical capacity, which is part of why the long-term tax revenue from the district matters to the state and to Lebanon.

The personal property valuation question

The bigger 2026 question for data centers isn't only whether they pay but how their personal property is valued.

Indiana personal property is reported on Form 103 by the taxpayer. Under 50 IAC 4.2-4-7, depreciable property is grouped into four pools based on the life the taxpayer uses for the asset on its federal tax return, and each year's acquisitions are valued at a fixed percentage of adjusted cost:

Pool 1 (1 to 4 year federal life): 65%, 50%, 35%, reaching 20% in the fourth year
Pool 2 (5 to 8 year federal life): 40%, 56%, 42%, 32%, 24%, 18%, reaching 15% in the seventh year
Pool 3 (9 to 12 year federal life): 40% in the first year, peaking at 60% in the second, then declining to 10% by the eleventh
Pool 4 (13 years and longer): 40% in the first year, peaking at 63% in the third, then declining to 5% by the thirteenth

Servers and network gear with 5-year federal lives fall in Pool 2, where value drops quickly. Longer-lived electrical and cooling infrastructure sits in higher pools and holds value longer.

The 30% floor is where SB 1 matters. Under IC 6-1.1-3-29(a), the total value of a taxpayer's depreciable personal property placed in service on or before January 1, 2025, in a taxing district cannot fall below 30% of its adjusted cost. Under IC 6-1.1-3-29(c), property placed in service after January 1, 2025, is not subject to that floor, so it can depreciate all the way down the pool table: to 15% of cost for Pool 2 equipment. For data centers continuously refreshing equipment, that means lower assessments over time on newer equipment than the old 30% floor would have produced. One exception: post-2025 property located in an existing TIF allocation area whose base assessed value was determined before January 1, 2025, stays subject to the floor.

How assessors review data center returns

Because so much value rides on the personal property return, the key review points are:

Pool assignment: whether each asset's pool matches the life used on the federal return
Cost basis: whether reported adjusted cost matches actual acquisition cost
Placed-in-service dates: which assets fall before or after the January 1, 2025 floor cutoff
Incentive coverage: which assets an abatement or exemption agreement actually covers

Disputes over these points go to the county PTABOA and then the Indiana Board of Tax Review, and they can involve large amounts of AV for a single facility.

The bigger policy question

Beyond the parcel-level mechanics, Indiana faces a strategic policy question for the 2027 legislative session: should the state's approach to data center assessment and abatement be standardized, or left to county-by-county negotiation?

Arguments for standardization:

Levels the field across counties
Reduces "race to the bottom" abatement competition between Indiana counties
Predictability for taxpayers

Arguments against:

Counties lose flexibility to compete with out-of-state alternatives
Local control is the bedrock of Indiana's economic development model
Standardization is hard given how unique each project is

The interim study committee on property tax assessment could address some of these questions, though data center specifics may end up in a separate workgroup.

What to watch through 2027

LEAP build-out: Meta's later phases and any additional data center announcements in the district
AWS New Carlisle: continued build-out of the $11 billion campus
New proposals elsewhere: including in Marion County, where Sabey's abatements were approved in September 2026 and Google's Franklin Township proposal was withdrawn
Personal property valuation cases: at PTABOA and IBTR, which will shape how pool and floor rules apply to data center equipment
Incentive terms on new deals: real property abatement percentages, equipment abatement lengths, and exemption agreements

What to do

If you're in a host county, read the actual abatement resolutions and exemption agreements for data centers in your area. Their terms, not a generic schedule, determine when that value reaches the tax rolls.
If you're a hyperscaler tax professional, model personal property under SB 1's floor change: equipment placed in service after January 1, 2025, can depreciate below 30% of cost, except in pre-2025 TIF areas.
If you're a local property owner near a data center, the incentive schedule on your neighbor matters for your tax rate over time as the AV comes onto the rolls.
If you're evaluating a data center investment, the after-incentive tax expense is a significant pro forma input. Don't model on year-1 abated taxes; model each year from the deal's real property abatement, equipment abatement or exemption, and the pool depreciation schedule.