Capital Asset
Question: When is an asset not a capital asset?
Answer: When it has a useful life of less than one year.
We're going to get really philosophical here for a second. In day-to-day living, what a useful life is can be hard to define. Exit philosophers. Enter accountants. In the world of accounting, it is really very simple.
Capital assets that normally have a useful life longer than a year include buildings, land, and major equipment, but they can also include trademarks, patents, copyrights, trucks and even artwork. You normally would not be buying and selling a capital asset on a daily basis...it's there for the long term.
Capital assets are an important line item on a company's balance sheet. If Cupcakes For All bought a new automatic cupcake maker for $10,000 this year, that is the number it would put on its balance sheet. But capital assets are usually depreciated and become worth less over time. So by year five, the book value has decreased and it might only be listed as a $2,000 capital asset on their balance sheet.
Companies can set up their own definition of what assets should be capitalized and figure out the depreciation schedule for each. However, auditors from the IRS will spot those who depreciate an asset for a very long period of time in an attempt to inflate their profits with very small depreciation expenses.
Related or Semi-related Video
Finance: What is working capital?268 Views
finance a la shmoop. what is working capital? alright people say we're opening
a lemonade stand. I seed what you did there. unfortunately we can't just blink [man stands in front of stage]
our eyes like Aladdin's genie and you know make it all happen. magically we
don't need a ton of money to start things but we need some money in advance. [genie comes out of lamp]
of you know when we begin collecting revenues well we have to rent a location,
and pay six months rent in advance, and we got to buy about 87 pounds of
sugar and 4,000 lemons and hundred fourteen huge bottles of purified water,
oh and cups we need eight thousand cups. all told it costs about 50 grand in
capital, working capital. see we did there, we need before we can start to run the
business, and you know pay employees and so on .so we get an investor TBOG. the [people stand in line for lemonade]
bank of Grandma. yeah we love her. she gives us a hundred grand. well that
entire hundred grand invested into our little business is our total working
capital. right? fifty grand and start the business working and we got 50 left over
or just in case things don't start up as quick as we hope .its capital that lets
us start working. in cleverly named there. all right well 50 grand we know we're
gonna spend 50 grand and cover the time in between when we're up and running and [calendar]
revenues and all the other stuff start to kick in. and well yeah it's that
simple. put together an actual drinkable lemonade recipe ?well that's just a
little bit harder. working capital. live it love it breathe it. [ grandma grimaces]
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