Accounting Question | Reselling Old Equipment?

[John Ralls]

Close. The difference between the depreciated value and the sale price of the asset is the capital gain/loss. Even fully-depreciated assets may retain some residual value (IIRC it was called "salvage value” in my accounting courset), even if it’s only the scrap value of the materials. 

Regards,
John Ralls

> On Jul 2, 2017, at 5:59 PM, R. Victor Klassen <rvklassen at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Any net gain from the sale would go in an income account (likely some kind of capital gain).  That’s assuming the equipment was capitalized in the first place.  An old mobile phone is small enough (value) that when it was purchased this was likely purely an expense item.  In the case of a somewhat more expensive item (say a personal computer), that would have been purchased not as an expense but as an asset (drawing from cash, a bank account or credit card to do so), and then ideally it would have been depreciated some over time before being sold.  [the depreciation being an annual expense].   Then at the time of sale, the asset value is reduced to zero, and the remainder (positive or negative) to balance the money received would be income/expense.
> 
> 
> R. Victor Klassen
> rvklassen at gmail.com
> 226-792-0733
> 
>> On Jul 2, 2017, at 8:13 PM, aegross <aegross at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> This is more of an intellectual curiousity for me than a serious matter.  In
>> proper double accounting, when selling an old asset, in this case an old
>> mobile phone (hence this is a small matter), proper accounting would say the
>> proceeds should go into an income account correct? 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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