Initially the company, though audits and penalties help keep them honest.
> accelerated depreciation is a big factor in determining whether projects occur
And clearly that’s a problem. Just as government farm subsidies waste money growing excess food accelerated depreciation causes significant economic waste.
> CPA
Ahh, there’s your problem a CPA has nothing to do with economic issues. This is an economic and thus a policy issue but you’re trying to argue based on the existing law rather than the underlying reality. I don’t expect you to get a in depth education on the topic, but if you’re interested I can recommended some good books to get you started.
But to summarize a huge body of work, the broken window fallacy demonstrates that economic activity isn’t inherently beneficial. Maximum efficiency isn’t equivalent to maximum GDP etc. As such policies that increase economic activity can be and generally are detrimental.
The day it falls down it stops being useful, the day before that you have full use and therefore value of the building.
Or as I said several posts ago: “The general rule is something is a deductible expense at the point of destruction or sale not purchase.” Sure, it burned in a fire fine assuming you don’t have insurance then it’s a loss at that point.
Really equipment is generally binary either it works or it’s broken, unless you’re selling it then it’s exactly as useful on day 2854 as 2855. Worse, well maintained equipment lasts far beyond the accelerated depreciation benchmarks used. Anything not thrown away the day it’s theoretical value hit’s zero is unambiguously a subsidy, but so is anything with scrap value etc. But, as I clearly demonstrated the idea of depreciation it’s self was created as a subsidy.
> Accelerated depreciation means you pay less tax and have more money at the start of a project when it is needed and pay more to the government later when it has stabilized.
People say stuff like this, yet hopefully suggesting the government hands out zero interest loans to group X raises red flags. Depreciation is a subsidy in effect a zero interest loan and that in and of it’s self is a problem. Opportunity cost is a huge deal and trying to ignore that is why central planning fails.