Asset value and depreciation

How assets lose value over time and how that is treated for tax and accounting.

19 terms in this topic

Accelerated depreciation

Accelerated depreciation is any depreciation method that front-loads deductions, so a business claims more of an asset's cost in the early years of its life and less later.

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Asset

An asset is anything a business or person owns or controls that is expected to produce future economic benefit, such as cash, equipment, vehicles, property or receivables.

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Asset disposal

Asset disposal is the sale, trade-in, scrapping or retirement of a business asset, which takes it off the asset register and triggers accounting and tax adjustments.

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Capital allowances

Capital allowances are the tax deductions you can claim for the decline in value of depreciating assets, such as plant and equipment, that you hold to produce assessable income.

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Capital expenditure (CapEx)

Capital expenditure (CapEx) is money a business spends to buy or improve fixed assets such as buildings, plant and vehicles, rather than on day-to-day running costs.

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Depreciation

Depreciation is the fall in an asset's value over time, spread across the years the asset is used so the cost can be claimed as a tax deduction.

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Depreciation schedule

A depreciation schedule is a report that lists an asset's cost, its effective life and the depreciation you can claim against income each year.

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Economic life

Economic life is the period during which an asset keeps earning enough to justify running it, after allowing for maintenance costs, lost efficiency, new technology and market demand.

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Instant asset write-off

The instant asset write-off is a tax concession that lets eligible businesses deduct the full cost of a depreciating asset in the year of first use, up to a threshold.

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Reducing balance depreciation

Reducing balance depreciation is a depreciation method that charges a fixed percentage of an asset's written-down value each year, so the deduction starts high and falls over time.

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Residual value

Residual value is the amount a leased car or asset is expected to be worth when the lease ends, set at the start and used to calculate the rentals.

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Salvage value

Salvage value is the informal name for what AASB 116 calls an asset's residual value: what it will fetch at the end of its useful life.

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Straight-line depreciation

Straight-line depreciation is a method that spreads an asset's cost, less its expected salvage value, evenly over its useful life so the same amount is deducted each year.

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Technological obsolescence

Technological obsolescence is the loss of an asset's usefulness, value or resale market because newer technology, standards or business models have superseded it, even though it may still work.

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Temporary full expensing

Temporary full expensing is a time-limited tax concession that let eligible businesses deduct a qualifying asset's full cost in its first year of use instead of over its effective life.

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Total cost of ownership (TCO)

Total cost of ownership (TCO) is the full cost of buying, financing, running and disposing of an asset over a set period, not just its purchase price.

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Useful life

Useful life is the period an asset is expected to be available for use by a business, and the number of years over which its cost is depreciated.

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Write-off

A write-off is an accounting entry that removes an asset or unpaid customer invoice from the books because it no longer has recoverable value, recording the loss against profit.

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Written-down value (WDV)

Written-down value (WDV) is a depreciating asset's cost less the depreciation claimed so far, and the base for future deductions and for gains or losses on disposal.

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