(1) “Property,” as used in ORS 308.505 to 308.665, includes all property, real and personal, tangible and intangible, used or held by a company as owner, occupant, lessee or otherwise, for or in use in the performance or maintenance of a business or service or in a sale of any commodity, as set forth in ORS 308.515, whether or not such activity is pursuant to any franchise, and includes but is not limited to the lands and buildings, rights of way, roadbed, water powers, vehicles, cars, rolling stock, tracks, wagons, horses, office furniture, telegraph, telephone and transmission lines, poles, wires, conduits, switchboards, machinery, appliances, appurtenances, docks, watercraft irrespective of the place of registry or enrollment, merchandise, inventories, tools, equipment, machinery, franchises and special franchises, work in progress and all other goods or chattels. “Property” does not include items of intangible property that represent claims on other property including money at interest, bonds, notes, claims, demands and all other evidences of indebtedness, secured or unsecured, including notes, bonds or certificates secured by mortgages, and all shares of stock in corporations, joint stock companies or associations.
(2) All land of any railroad, logging road, electric rail or trackless transportation company, or railroad switching and terminal company, including land used or held and claimed exclusively as right of way, with all the tracks and substructures and superstructures that support the same, together with all sidetracks, second tracks, turnouts, station houses, depots, roundhouses, engine houses, machine shops, buildings or other structures, without separating same into lands and improvements, is real property and the rolling stock and all other property is personal property.
(3) Without especially defining and enumerating the treatment, the Department of Revenue shall treat all land of any company as real property, and except as provided in subsection (2) of this section, all docks, hangars, landing fields, exchanges, office buildings, bridges, power plants, dams, reservoirs, substations, relay stations, telegraph, telephone or transmission and distribution lines located upon property owned by the company, and all other buildings, structures, improvements or fixtures of a permanent character thereon, as real property, and all other property as personal property.
(4)(a) Except as provided in ORS 308.517 (2) and in paragraphs (b) and (c) of this subsection, the renting, leasing, chartering or otherwise assigning of property exclusively for the use or benefit of another shall not constitute a use by the lessor.
(b) A lessor shall be deemed the user of property rented, leased or otherwise furnished by it to its employee as an incident of employment.
(c) A rail transportation company shall be deemed the user of property situated within its station ground reservations or rights of way notwithstanding the fact that such property may be leased, rented or otherwise assigned by it for the use or benefit of another.
(5) Property found by the department to have an integrated use for or in more than one business, service or sale, where at least one such business, service or sale is one enumerated in ORS 308.515, shall be classified by the department as being within or without the definition of property under subsection (1) of this section, according to the primary use of such property, as determined by the department.
(6) For purposes of determining the maximum assessed value of property under section 11, Article XI of the Oregon Constitution, “property” means all property assessed to each company that is subject to assessment under ORS 308.505 to 308.665. [Amended by 1957 c.711 §2; 1977 c.602 §2; 1997 c.154 §32; 1997 c.541 §203; 2003 c.46 §18]
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