20/07/2020
What is Depreciation?
In accounting, depreciation refers to a reduction in the value of a fixed asset over its useful life. It is obvious that with the usage over time everything deteriorates, so the same rule goes for fixed assets purchased for the operations of the business. Hence depreciation shows how much asset’s value has been used till the reporting date. Depreciating assets helps companies earn money from an asset while expensing a portion of its cost each year the asset is in use if it is not considered, will overstate the reporting profit.
PURPOSE OF DEPRECIATION
Depreciation is used by companies to make their accounting in compliance with accounting standards. Since according to the matching concept all expenses used for generating revenue needs to be taken into consideration. In addition, depreciation can also be used for tax purposes as it is a cost and its inclusion in the income statement will reduce the tax payable. Though rates used by tax authorities and the accounting rates may differ but both of them treat depreciation as an expense.
RECORDING OF DEPRECIATION
In the first place when a fixed asset is purchased, the entire cash outlay might be paid but the expense is recorded incrementally for financial reporting purposes because assets provide a benefit to the company over a lengthy period of time. Due to this, depreciation is considered as a non-cash expense since it doesn’t represent an actual cash outflow. The total amount that is depreciated is represented as a percentage; referred to as depreciation rate. For Instance, if an asset’s value is $10,000 and the depreciation rate is 10%, hence per annum depreciation will be $1000.