 |
Printing Industries of New England 5 Crystal Pond
Road, Southborough, MA 01772-1758 The largest trade association to serve commercial printing and graphic communications companies in five New England states. |
| Computer
Depreciation |
|
|
We’ve made tremendous progress on overall computer depreciation reform with passage of a 30% bonus depreciation deduction in the Job Creation and Worker Assistance Act of 2002. President Bush signed the bill into law this spring after Congress passed it almost unanimously. This is after fighting over the details for six months and having the bill pulled from the Senate floor several times. If not for the persistence of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, nothing would have emerged from Congress. The legislation allows an additional first-year 30 percent depreciation reduction (for regular tax and alternative minimum tax calculations) for property placed in service after September 10, 2001 and before September 11, 2004. Qualifying property includes (1) property with an applicable recovery period of 20 years or less (eg, vehicles, computers, office equipment), (2) water utility property, (3) certain computer software, or (4) qualified leasehold improvement property. Congressmen Mac Collins (R-GA) and Ben Cardin (D-MD) deserve our thanks for getting this issue on the books by sponsoring legislation to reduce the depreciation schedule for computers and peripheral equipment used in manufacturing from five years down to two years. Thanks also go to Congressman Jerry Weller (R-IL) for sponsoring expensing legislation and being such a fervent supporter of this issue. On the Senate side, we continue to owe Senator Don Nickles (R-OK) our thanks for supporting us on this issue. PIA continues to push for overall reform of the depreciation schedules, most importantly computer depreciation. Reducing the computer depreciation schedule for computers used in manufacturing from five years to two years is the set goal unless support for reducing all business computer depreciation schedules becomes more appealing to a greater number of legislators. |
|