intangible property tax in oregon and you know this seems like organs are set up so there isn't you know organ exams all everybody from from back on intangible property except these  so let's suppose that that except clause that except for railroads intangible personal property is not subject to assessment of taxation you have a for our problem that and your honor of them are a nearly trivial you know refurbished all in cars probably not a major source of revenue for four or oregon but you do have some pretty you do have some pretty narrow but pretty large mostly probably out of state because they're heavily regulated industries listed on that on that list but doesn't the question for us turn a how broad that classes and whether there's a good reason for distinguishing between that class and everybody else in oregon yes i think says hey we have a good reason for doing this it doesn't have if you do it from a nation and that's not it's not a crazy argument they but you also have the path that those all happen also be the type in cities that you would in theory want to concern about that i mean i think it is important to look at the reason why these industries are centrally assessed and their reason it doesn't have anything to do with attempting to target and the other thing i would point out though is that could ask a follow up question about that of course i understand the the the reason why these industries are centrally is that it makes perfect sense but it seems like that's almost like a head fake on your part because the question is after you've decided that these industries be centrally assessed why do you why are you taxing their intensive property where you're not taxing the intent or property of  industries that are assessed county by county and i've got it doesn't for my simple point where the most the biggest thing that i want to hear from you is something that i don't think i saw in the briefs and i hope think i saw  but was the reason why you decided to tax the intangible property of those industries and not other it strippers you want to take one more crack it giving us a reason for doing not i'll do my best your honor i think it again gets back to how these industries are valued and looking at the unit valuation and when you're looking at that unit valuation it's much more difficult to separate if you're looking at the whole value of the possessing these industries was it didn't have anything to do with intangible property i thought that it i thought that the rationale was based on the need to avoid  balkanization taxation with respect to these industries in the different counties and there you know there may be a race to the bottom or the top or whatever the however you want to characterize it but i i don't i don't understand the how the rationale for centrally assessing industries relates to the decision to tax the intangibles property it's so that's that's my question and i are over there is value that that you can easily disentangle those things from the overall valuation it if it gets less practical when you're talking about unit valuation of the entire business where well it may be difficult that's all sort of wrapped up so we just want to get one valuation well that's a good argument for convenience except for five years you did it you were able to do it that way so it wasn't hard all of the industries that are included in that section of the code or just or just for railroads or just for b n s f your honor i don't believe the record reflects that and i don't know the answer to that ok so you don't so as far as you know there was no there was no sort of general a new director of revenue in oregon is that why are we doing it this way this is the dick you let's let's we can we can we need to tax intangible property and we're going to do it for all of these these fourteen votes who are listed in the code i don't believe the record  to figure out whether anybody else within the within that class has been has been taxed on unintentional property well i don't think so because this piece wasn't but he gave it to along the lines of this is just the f that's being targeted here rather it's a question of whether organists system violates that section before and so i think that's a legal question this court can answer if however this court is concerned  the we're having my friend about the question of what you know how do you how do you deal with the intangible property when it's essentially assessed taxpayer i think the st thing is to put that in proper context that that the only relevance of that argument is it would be as a justification for the difference in treatment so at that point we're evaluating a discrimination claim and scream korda said and c s x two that discrimination in this context is treating two similarly situated taxpayers differently without a justification for the difference and so this would be i guess offered as a justification now i don't think judge bybee to your question about remand i don't think well it's administratively more convenient for us to discriminate it can never be a valid justification i think we want to go down the path of saying that discrimination just because it's convenient for the discriminator is therefore law centrally assessed on the unit value concept and virtually every state there's a couple states where we don't really operate in the same way and so we're not we look more like a normal industrial expert there but virtually everywhere which we where we have property we have we are  so and i think now it would be up to sixteen because wisconsin would have been one of those of course that was addressed in the th circuit recent decision of which the court is aware and so that i'm happy to give the court the list but the point is that everybody else in the country finds it perfectly practicable to assess us and then to the extent that assessment has captured intangible assets it's just a subtraction problem you value the intangible assets and subtract them off and that's that's exactly what was going on in the th circuit case so they're the union pacific railroad that said to wisconsin we think our computer software which is valued at you know so many millions of dollars is exempt from and so you know we subtract out often our you know and you think that should be subtracted off in our valuation occupation and wisconsin disagreed litigated it the th circuit held and in line with what every other court to look at this question is has as hellholes which is that ok this is discriminatory and it's not justified and so you know pacific gets an exemption for that software and the effect of that it gets to the broader point about the effect of that is simply to so i gather that for for purposes of your client the the assessment jurisdiction is the state of or right i actually don't think that definition control but it is also true for example that railroads are there oh user them in many states and i can't remember which organ specifically but i believe it's true in oregon their values are  allocated at the county level so it sort of you know there's an overall state number and then it's broken up into particular amounts that are attributable to particular counties and so there's sometimes is litigation in which the relevant comparison that needs to be made is tween the railroad and other commercial industrial taxpayers in that county if there's some feature of the case that is specific to the county so for example if a county has a cou a to take an example of or three if the county was a particular county was imposing a a a high fair tax rate you would look within the county what the individual what what the other commercial se industries we're going to use entire state as the geographical area for assessing them because we can't do it county by county that's correct but there is another step in the assessment process it that often breaks up values by county and so sometimes the dispute is actually specific to a county and in that situation you would want to be looking just the county so the assessment process doesn't end with the state value this estimate process typically ends true market value of rail transportation property exceeds by at least five percent the ratio of assessed value to true market value of other commercial and industrial property in all oz there so in other relief may be granted only if the ratio is is of true market value of real transportation property exceeds by at least five percent the ratio of the sest value to true market value of other commercial industrial property in the same assessment i saw when i was reading that i got a little caught up in what the comparative should be because certainly to the most natural understanding of this is assessment jurisdiction for purposes of these fourteen industries is the state of oregon and the assessment jurisdiction for the purpose purpose of the industries that are taxed county by county is the county in which they are assessed and taxed so they made me wonder if under the plain language of the statute is it would be inappropriate for us to conduct a comparison which makes sense because if it's about assessment ratios that are kind of to minimize and the claims that are about assessment ratios are are really those brought under wanted to the nd thing i would say is that the the i think the implication of of of your honors reading sort of whether you think about it as part of the statutory text or you simply think about it in terms of who are we comparing to the implication of that is that fourteen industries in this assessment jurisdiction and they're all treated the same way with respect to intangible property rights so so congress this is not in the papers but i'm trying to answer your question i'd be happy to file a letter that x gives you the authorities but congress actually considered that approach and rejected it so there's a senate report in the legislative history that that explains that congress had considered adopting an approach where you would compare the railroads to the other utilities the congress knew were assessed in this way and that approach was rejected in favor of the of the you know all commercial and industrial tax payers approach and that's a really important reason and the mental reason behind the statute that explains why congress which is and this gets back to some of the colloquy is with with my food my friend i think judge van dyke you recognize this the strategy of the fo act is that by tying the railroad streetman to a general mass of taxpayers you assure that the state isn't going to be squeezing the channels of interstate commerce for extra tax revenue right so on the one hand the state can grant specific policy exemptions which the court in a c f recognizes are you know kind of part of our federalism balance right that the states do have the ability to say well we want to promote a you know we want to promote a particular industry or exempt a particular kind of property we don't have to give the railroads most favored taxpayer status either you know when we do that but here you've got a situation where the state is not the state even if you treat the state as exempting the everybody except the railroads and the few other utilities here which i don't think the right reading  statute but even if you read it that way the state isn't exempting everybody some policy reason right what the state is doing here is is it is adopting a tax law that creates this burden on interstate commerce which is exactly what congress was trying to more industries i don't i don't know much about oregon but i'm looking at this list of industries and includes heating and gas and electricity i mean in california we have p g and e you know so is there is there similar entity in oregon that provides heating and gas electricity and is it  isn't really fair to say that that's a that's the type whatever entity that is the type of vanity that you would expect the state of oregon to discriminate against for taxation well the reason no i don't think that's quite the right way to think through it because what congress is strategy is is is that is that if you if you left the state lumped the railroads in with other taxpayers who camps vote with their feet who can't remove themselves from the jurisdiction you're not going to actually protect the railroad right so i mean just shop radio and hire are here in northern california and you know it's been all over the press that you know i must this talking about well i'm going to take company and the railroad can't do that they can't pick up the leads in the same way and so they're stuck there and they're going to be squeezed by the by the state for all their work worth remembering that if we're going to position is correct here right not only can they not only can they they do what i think one of your honor suggested and simply say will only the railroads are the ones who have to pay for intangible property tax rate but they can do it on the other end too which is they can say you know what nobody even has to pay personal property tax advantage which some states do and and and they could go further and they could say well we're just going to have only some kind of real property tax rate there's no limit to the difference in treatment and that's this and so the strategy of the four act is say well you want to link the railroads to a group of taxpayers this court actually and trailer train but no eleven trailer train suggests that you know if you lump the railroads in majority of other commercial and industrial taxpayers but not eleven this that trailer transition you know then you've got some good assurance that this is this is the opposite end of the spectrum you've got if you're literally looked down at the statute if your stipulation was the stipulations in this case were that the appropriate comparison class was to emotional and industrial property in the state of oregon and i think when you are going to use the stipulation it's because context but that stipulation is what's the definition of commercial and industrial property and subsection eight or tells us what that definition is and tells us it would only look property that is subject to a property tax levy which which for a look least us taxpayers is not intangible personal my last thing that i would just go back to is the court so look at a c s and understand that the court w whether this early property tax system oregon's property tax system which is not markedly different now than it was twenty five years ago it at that time contained exemptions or intangible personal property and  thank you counsel this case is submitted