Hi @Krj71455 I don't get on here a lot, obviously.
Accounting types like to think about where something best fits. The IRS, though, is only concerned about compliance. Since Sec 176 allows almost any fully used capital assets to be depreciated in the year acquired, there is likely to be no tax issue with declaring and deducting expenses regardless (of whether you called it a depreciating asset or a current expense,) assuming that your expenses are not out of scope with your income. The only question might be could you spread out the deduction using the depreciation tables (if you wanted to, because that was advantageous over the long haul.) In that case, you have to match your asset to some appropriate class life. Assets have classes :-). If it's attached to the food truck, you could probably classify it, even if it wouldn't be otherwise classified. On the other hand, if it's useful life is less than a year, (like paper clips, business cards, et al) you can be pretty sure this is not a long term asset ;-). Just to give you an example, you could buy a meat slicer and depreciate it, or you could just treat it as supplies. The IRS would get concerned if the meat slicer ended up at your sister-in-law's house in Phoenix and you only do business in Florida, no matter where you deducted the expense. But if it was a depreciating asset, you would have to sell it or junk it, and enter that against the asset entry in your depreciation tables. If you had just taken it as an expense, you just sell it or give it away and make sure that your decision was reasonably business-like, even though that was your favorite sister-in-law. (Maybe you replaced the slow slicer with a super duper slicer because your business was going out the roof and you only have room for one slicer on each truck, or you switched to pre-sliced meat to improve your work flow.)
