@Mosaic wrote:
Actually the IRS is the best place to get answers to tax questions. You can depreciate an old car IF you just bought it and put it into service the first year you bought it. Otherwise you must use standard mileage deduction. They consider it 5 years depreciation, which means your car was fully depreciated before you put it into use.
Sorry, that is not quite correct. It is not necessary to have recently purchased an asset in order to take depreciation for business use. If you convert personal property to business use, you start taking depreciation as of the date the asset is placed in service, whether or not it was recently purchased. However, the basis for depreciation is either your cost basis, or the fair market value on the date the asset was placed into service, whichever is lower.
This general rule applies for any business asset. However, because cars (specifically, passenger vehicles under 6000 pounds) have 2 different methods to compute expenses, it will usually better to use the standard mileage method if you place an older vehicle in service with your business.
