How to track depreciation?

[Derek Atkins]

If you're not a business then technically you can't depreciate the
car.  When you sell the car, you create a split transaction.  In
the asset you reduce by the full (original) value of the car, then
the sale value goes into Income:Auto Sale, and then rest goes into
Equity:Capital Depreciation.  I don't think you can count is as a
capital loss.

Maybe an accountant will chime in?

-derek

marc at osmium.mv.net writes:

> Hello -
>
> I own a car, which when I purchased it, I transferred the monies used to 
> pay for it from my checking account to an asset account "car". Several 
> years have past, and now it is time to sell the car. The amount I will 
> receive for the car will be significantly less than what I paid. My 
> questions are:
>
> 1) Should I have been tracking depreciation on some regular basis over
>    the past years, to properly reflect its current value in net-worth
>    statements? If so, how is that done?
>
> 2) Now that the car will be sold, how should I account for the money that
>    I receive (I presume it isn't income), and how do I account for the
>    difference of sold-value versus asset value on the books?
>
> I presume that the above questions are general, in that they are true for 
> all assets that are tracked and/or later sold (at profit or loss).

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available