If you have a business or investment asset that's expected to be used for more than one year, you'll deduct the cost of the asset over the course of several years (there is an exception to this rule if you are eligible and elect to write off a small business asset in the first year).

The IRS provides a slew of depreciation tables to be used in different situations:

• the MACRS table (Table A-1) using the half-year convention and the 200 percent declining-balance method -- most commonly used for non-real-estate property
• the MACRS tables (Tables A-2 - A-5) using the mid-quarter convention and the 200 percent declining balance method -- most commonly used for non-real-estate property when more that 40 percent of new property for the year was placed into service in the last quarter
• the MACRS table (Table A-14) using the half-year convention and the 150 percent declining-balance method -- most commonly used for farm property and all nonfarm property in the 15-year and 20-year classes; may be used for non-real-estate property
• the MACRS tables (Tables A-15 - A-18) using the mid-quarter convention and the 150 percent declining balance method -- most commonly used for farm property and all nonfarm property in the 15-year and 20-year classes when more that 40 percent of new property for the year was placed into service in the last quarter; may also be used for other non-real estate property
• MACRS straight-line tables (Tables A-6 and A-7a) for residential and nonresidential real estate
• MACRS straight-line table (Table A-7) for nonresidential real estate you began using after 1986, but before May 13, 1993
• Straight-line tables (Tables A-8 - A-13) for those using the Alternative Depreciation System (ADS), including those who must calculate depreciation for purposes of the AMT
• Table of Class Lives and Recovery Periods under MACRS and ADS (Tables B-1 - B-2).

The files are in rich text format (RTF) that is suitable for use with most word processing programs used in the Windows environment.

For more information, see our discussion of capital assets and depreciation.

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