Business and Personal Finance Dictionary

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• DEPRECIATION
  
  the amount of expense charged against earnings by a company to write off the cost of a plant or machine over its useful live, giving consideration to wear and tear, obsolescence, and salvage value. If the expense is assumed to be incurred in equal amounts in each business period over the life of the asset, the depreciation method used is straight line (SL). If the expense is assumed to be incurred in decreasing amounts in each business period over the life of the asset, the method used is said to be accelerated. Two commonly used variations of the accelerated method of depreciating an asset are the sum-of-years digits (SYD) and the double-declining balance (DDB) methods. Frequently, accelerated depreciation is chosen for a business' tax expense but straight line is chosen for its financial reporting purposes.
  
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