In accrual basis accounting, when your business purchases a long-lived asset, such as a vehicle, a building or a piece of equipment, you don't immediately write off the full cost as an expense. Rather ...

One of the most common statements about new cars is that they depreciate 10%-30% once they're driven off the dealer's lot. This statement, at least according to generally accepted accounting ...

Daniel Liberto is a journalist with over 10 years of experience working with publications such as the Financial Times, The Independent, and Investors Chronicle. Economic depreciation is a measure of ...

John Parker is a business writer with 20+ years of experience as a business executive specializing in accounting and finance. Charlene Rhinehart is a CPA , CFE, chair of an Illinois CPA Society ...

When a company acquires assets, those assets usually come at a cost. However, because most assets don't last forever, their cost needs to be proportionately expensed based on the time period during ...

It's not that Uncle Sam does not want your clients to deduct those big-ticket items that are critical to running almost any business. The less cynical among us would nod and agree with the Internal ...

Money rules the world. From Fortune 500 companies to the dollar bills in your wallet, money is what makes the world go round. Although many people lack a basic understanding of money. That’s why we ...

The Miller and Bahnson article "Duh-preciation: Why is this elephant still in the room?" (Accounting Today, Dec. 13-Jan. 10, 2011, page 17) is a great example of the damage sitting in an ivory tower ...

Now you expense it, now you don't. Any company can instantly boost earnings by playing around with depreciation assumptions. Remember the taxi company we talked about in Part 1 of this article? If ...