What are capital assets? What are its features and types? How is it calculated?
Even if it is just a laptop, desk and chair, your business needs equipment to operate. Many small businesses end up using a great deal of equipment, from office furniture to plant and machinery. Whatever you use them for, these tools are so central to running your business that you get the special tax treatment. It is known as “capital assets”.
What are capital assets?
A capital asset is an asset that will be useful to your business over a long period of time (usually more than two years) and costs more than your typical day-to-day operating costs. A capital asset can be a piece of equipment or an investment.
Capital assets are also called “fixed assets”.
Capital assets can be either “tangible assets” or “intangible assets,” depending on whether you can see and touch them.
A capital asset is a property that is expected to generate value over a long period of time. Capital assets constitute the production base of the corporation. Examples of capital assets are buildings, computers, machinery, and vehicles. In asset-intensive industries, companies tend to invest a large portion of their money in capital assets. Capital assets have the following characteristics:
- It has an expected useful life of more than one year
- Its acquisition cost exceeds a minimum amount set by the company, known as the capitalization threshold
- They are not expected to be sold as a normal part of business operations, as is the case for inventory
- They tend not to be easily convertible into cash
Capital assets are defined differently when viewed from a tax perspective. For tax purposes, a capital asset is all property held by a taxpayer, except for inventory and accounts receivable.
Examples of capital assets:
- investment property
- art (collectible)
- bonds
- Coins
- gems
- He went
- the earth
- silver
- Stamps
- Stores
Types of capital assets
Capital assets can be of two types – long-term capital assets and short-term capital assets.
Long-term capital assets are assets that are held for a period longer than a specified holding period.
Short-term capital assets are assets held for less than a specified holding period.
The holding period varies for different types of assets. Similarly, the capital gains tax is also different from long-term capital assets, which attract long-term capital gains taxes, and short-term capital assets, which attract short-term capital gains tax.
How do I calculate capital assets?
Because of their long-term nature, capital assets must be included on your balance sheet. This creates a challenge, because over the years that you own the asset, its value will decrease. This is called depreciation, and it must be taken into account in the accounting process.
The fact that you are using the asset regularly means that this depreciation can be considered to occur in a regular manner. Each year, a portion of the asset’s value must be deducted from your business earnings. You can calculate the depreciation rate as a percentage of the asset’s total cost, or as a percentage of its value at the beginning of the year.
Why is it important to identify your capital assets?
The main reason to take control of your capital assets is that they are treated differently from other assets, both in terms of taxes and in your accounts. Not handling capital assets properly may mean that you pay more taxes than you should.
Is there tax exemption available?
The depreciation of capital assets is also important to the way they are handled for tax purposes. The IRS does not consider depreciation as an allowable expense, so although it should be removed from your profit, it should be added back in when determining how much tax you need to pay. However, the IRS gives tax breaks on some of your capital assets — which is fine, but adds another layer of management.
The capital asset tax exemption comes in the form of capital allowances.
What are capital assets?
A capital asset (sometimes called a fixed asset) is any significant piece of equipment that has been in use for more than a year and is not sold as a regular part of your operations.
For example, if you refurbished camper trucks, each individual truck is not a capital asset, but will be your truck, tools, etc.
What is an example of a capital asset?
Capital assets are important parts of property such as homes, cars, investment properties, stocks, bonds, and even collectibles or art.
Is real estate a capital asset?
Real estate can indeed be a capital asset, but it is often classified as inventory, which by definition is not a capital asset. Any gain on sales of inventory is business income, taxable at ordinary tax rates, not capital gains tax rates. Any loss is fully deductible and is not limited to capital loss.
How are capital gains calculated?
In the case of short-term capital gains, capital gain = final sale price – (acquisition cost + home improvement cost + moving cost).
In the case of long-term capital gains, capital gain = final sale price – (conversion cost + indexed acquisition cost + indexed home improvement cost).
The bottom line
Capital assets are assets that are used in a company’s business operations to generate revenue over more than one year.
It is recorded as an asset on the balance sheet and spent over the useful life of the asset through a process called depreciation.
The expenditure of the asset over its useful life helps to match the cost of the asset with the revenues it generated during the same time period.