Depreciable Life-Mind is Blank

[Bird Legs]

What is the depreciable life for carpet installed in residential rental home?
Client replaced in old carpet in July of 2004.
Please accept my apologies for this simple question, however, the ghosts, goblins,
Black Barts, Bees Knees, Snaggletooths and Scarecrows scared me out of my wits,
last night and am still trying to get everything together again.

[Richard]

Recollection....

I'm a bit more than guessing here, as I have no reference materials with me, but I believe that the depreciation recovery period for carpet is the same as other furnishings for a rental - 5 years.

[Gene V]

Carpet depr.

Richard,
You are correct. Carpet depr. is 5 years, Pub. 17 page 77

[Black Bart]

Birdman

What is the depreciable life for carpet installed in residential rental home?
.

This is an excerpt from a 1999 J. K. Lasser' Monthly Tax Letter and it's followed by an IRS reference:

"The IRS has announced that furnishings, carpeting, and appliances used in residential rental real property should be depreciated over a five-year recovery period. Up until this announcement, instructions to Form 4562 (Depreciation Schedule) applied a seven-year period. The IRS does not explain why it took over a decade (since the release of Revenue Procedure 87-56) to make this change." Announcement 99-82, IRB 1999-32, 244

[Bird Legs]

Thanks to

all of you for your assistance.
Black Bart, I do enjoy your postings. Wish I was as eloquent and imaginative.

[Black Bart]

Thanks,

Okay to quote you?

[Bird Legs]

Black Bart,

it is okay to quote me. However, if there is any money received from quoting me, my commission is 20%.

[Unregistered]

A blank mind is not a depreciable item. If it's blank it's not "used in a trade or business".

[jainen]

very little basis

Even if it's not blank, it could go blank at any time. At least, that's my experience. Therefore it doesn't have a determinable life and can't be depreciated. Also, a lot of what makes up my mind has very little basis.

[Bees Knees]

A blank mind is a terrible thing to depreciate.

[Bird Legs]

Wiseguys

All right you guys. Just because my age is catching up with my mind, my legs wobbly,
need trifocals to see, and my battery keeps going out on my hearing aid, doesn't mean
that I am in need of a nursing home. Yet.

[Armando Beaujolais]

A blank mind is not a depreciable item. If it's blank it's not "used in a trade or business".

But it wears out, gets used up, loses its value from natural causes...

[Gretel]

Blank Mind

Maybe we are confusing terms here. In the area were the mind that is blank natural recourses are used up. Isn't that called depletion?

[Bees Knees]

No, the proper term is amortization. The tangible asset, the brain, is still there. But the information contained in the brain, the mind, is not. The mind therefore is an intangible asset and is thus amortized over 15 years if acquired in the purchase of a business, or deductible currently if self created.

Did you purchase the mind you lost, or did you self create it?

That would determine the proper treatment of the transaction that resulted in the blank mind.

[RLymanC]

Fully Depreciated

Wife is in kitchen fixing dinner for her husband and quest.

Husband explains to his quest that he and his wife had dinner at the best restaurant ever.
“OH,,,,what was the name of it” asked the guest.
MMM,,,,, let me think,,,,,what’s the name of that red flower that grows on a thorny stem.
OH,,, you mean a Rose.
That’s it…….HEY ROSE,,, what’s the name of that restaurant we went to the other night.