iMac Depreciation

[DJC17]

I realise this is probably a bit of a strange question!

I am almost set on buying a 20" iMac 2.0Ghz w/ 1.5Gb RAM / 400Gb within the next week or two. This purchase, in addition to my HE saving (about £300 / $550usd) will be billed through my business, so I can claim various tax incentives and claw back up to 20% from the tax-man.

However, I will need to know it's approximate depreciation over the year. I am completely new to Macs, so I just don't know - I also don't know what last years specs were, so I can't look at eBay for a guide either!

If someone could give me a rough depreciation percentage in the first year, second year and third year that would be more than great. It would also keep the smile on my accountants face :D

PS. Figure only needs to be ballpark, based on previous mac depreciation!

[javiercr]

Confession of a tax scam in macrumors! great.

this is last years model:

20-inch widescreen LCD
1.8GHz PowerPC G5
600MHz frontside bus
256MB DDR400 SDRAM
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
64MB DDR video memory
160GB Serial ATA hard drive
Slot-load SuperDrive

Apple Certified Refurbished
Shipped with Mac OS 10.3 and iLife 04

£1169.00 (in vat) / £994.89 (ex vat)

[DJC17]

Confession of a tax scam in macrumors! great.



I prefer to think of it as a money saving exercise ;)

[Maxiseller]

Exactly, and money saving is perfectly legitimate in the business world!

Anyway, there's only word that really aptly describes the tax man. It begins with a B and ends in ollocks!


{EDIT}

Why can't I add a reply? So bloody politically correct this thread. (tuts) p.s. evade the taxman all you want if I were you. A lot of us would do the same, and theres nothing wrong in looking after number one.

[deebster]

The iMac G5 is only around a year old and is in it's second cycle, so you probably won't be able to get a decent estimate of depreciation with such a short lifespan, and comparing it to the second hand cost of the old G4 model isn't really gonna help much either I'd think.

My guesstimate is depreciation of no more than 20% per year. Macs generally have good resale value - much better than PCs.

If it's of any help, the office PCs (when I used to get involved in this sort of stuff a few years ago) were given a write-off period of 3 years, sometimes stretched a bit. But that seems way off compared to what you can sell a 3 year old Mac for. (I paid roughly £1100 for my iBook 3 years ago and second hand cost of it on eBay is usually in the £300+ range)

Depends on which way you need it to work - if you are gonna save more with stating faster depreciation then figure maybe 30%pa, but I'd still say it shouldn't be even 20%.

Screw that taxman mate :)

[yellow]

Exactly, and money saving is perfectly legitimate in the business world!

Buying a Mac using a higer education discount, but purchasing it through your business to use as a write off? Unless your business is a higher ed school, or supporting a higher ed school, this seems Not Right™ to me..