In the recent decision of Huang v. Department of Revenue The Oregon Tax Court denied a taxpayer’s request for a reduction in the property tax valuation of a motel due to the taxpayer’s failure to prove the valuation of intangible business property. 

The taxpayer purchased a motel and the sales agreement allocated a portion of the purchase price to “land and buildings” and a portion to “Trade Name and Goodwill”. The taxpayer sought to have the ”Trade Name and Goodwill”  portion excluded from the purchase price in order to arrive at the value for property tax purposes. The Tax Court found that: 

“Taxpayers’ actions and Huang’s testimony fail to provide an explanation for why the Sales Agreement allocated the sales price among ‘Land and Buildings’ and ‘Trade [N]ame and Goodwill’” 

In fact, the actions of the taxpayer both prior to the sale and subsequently seem to indicate the trade name had minimal, if any, value (they changed the name of the hotel after the sale) or that goodwill was properly valued (Haung testified that he did not know the manner in which the seller operated the business prior to the sale).