Write-Down

  

Categories: Accounting, Banking

What you should be doing so you stop forgetting everything (but really though, it’ll make your life easier, so get on it).

In legal-speak, a “write-down” is an accounting term for an asset when it becomes impaired. An asset becomes impaired when its current market value is well below its historical average, or less than the value listed on the company’s balance sheet.

Think of it less as “writing something down” and more as writing that an asset has gone down in value. If a write-down is the Wicked Witch of the West, the write-up is the Good Witch of the North, which is when an increase is made to the book value of an asset.

During the financial crisis, a huge rise in write-downs on banks’ balance sheets forced them to scramble to find other capital that they needed in order to fulfill minimum capital requirements (banks legally have to have a certain amount of cash and capital on hand at any given time). Write-downs aren’t always bad, though. They lower the amount of taxable income for companies, so a write-down every once in a while is fine. It’s when they come en masse that panic ensues.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What is Double Declining Balanc...10 Views

00:00

Finance a la shmoop what is double-declining balance sheet

00:05

depreciation kind of sounds like that strange-looking British double-decker [Buses in London]

00:10

bus right but it's not instead it's a structure or formula under which [Definition of a double declining balance sheet]

00:15

companies assess the depreciating value of an asset that you know loses value

00:21

it's basically the way they lose or track the loss of value in it that's [Guy talking on a London street]

00:25

different from normal depreciation like a tractor smelting Factory or the break [A bucket of molten metal being poured]

00:31

room vending machine which used to deposit KitKat bars but has been hanging [KitKat bar gets stuck in the machine]

00:35

on to that one bar since 1992 we got to depreciate those well if Shmaterpiller

00:40

has a smelting Factory they paid a hundred million bucks to build which [100 million bucks price tag appears]

00:44

will be sold for salvage value or scrap for ten million bucks in 20 years then

00:49

the decline in total value over that time will be ninety million bucks yep [Decline in value calculation]

00:54

over twenty years or four and a half million dollars each year if the company

00:59

used straight-line depreciation to account for the loss in value of that [Straight line on a value/time graph]

01:04

smelting Factory but under double declining balance depreciation systems

01:09

the deduction rate is essentially double the straight-line amounts it's still the

01:14

same total amount of deduction it's not like the value of the tractor factory

01:18

changed either at purchase time or scrap time but the speed and timing of the [Timeline of depreciation]

01:24

depreciation changed to favor high depreciation in the early years giving

01:29

the company lower profits but also lower taxes [The first 5 years on the timeline are highlighted]

01:32

well the accounting rationale follows suit the utility or value of the asset

01:37

is in fact not declining in true market value in a steady state straight-line [Stop sign appears over the value graph]

01:44

over twenty years try to convince a buyer that your car

01:47

has depreciated only five percent in value a year after you bought it new [Car for sale on eBay]

01:51

yeah not happening depreciate way more than that so in double declining balance

01:55

depreciation instead of deducting four-and-a-half million bucks a year the

01:59

company would deduct nine million a year each year with some adjustments along

02:04

the way and yes we're way over generalizing on that statement until [Overgeneralizing flashing red]

02:07

that smelting Factory was fully deducted away to whatever terminal salvage value

02:12

or scrap value they predicted it would then sell [Factory value declining]

02:15

for that is if a normal depreciation was taking four-and-a-half million bucks a

02:20

year for 20 years or four-and-a-half percent of the total initial cost then [Straight line depreciation per year]

02:24

double declining balance depreciation would take double that number or nine

02:30

percent of the hundred million dollars in year one

02:34

so they deduct nine million right upfront and your one right goes from 100

02:38

to ninety one on the sheets and in reality that's probably a lot closer to [Price tag decreasing]

02:42

what the actual loss and market value of the smelting machine and would look like

02:46

all right well then in year two double declining balance depreciation would

02:49

again take double the flat rate of that four inhabitant they double it to nine

02:54

percent of the remaining book value of the smelter or nine percent of the

02:58

remaining 91 million that it's worth or about 8.2 million in incremental [Double declining balance depreciation per year]

03:03

depreciation for that year leaving the value ninety one - 8.2 or eighty two

03:08

point eight million dollars in year three the value of the shelter would

03:12

drop another nine percent to about seventy five point four million say we

03:16

did all the math therefore there no extra charge and in year four down nine [Post it note showing the calculation]

03:20

percent again to around sixty eight point six million dollars so up to this

03:24

point the set of deductions would look like this there we go all that stuff you [Amount depreciated in the first 4 years is shown]

03:28

notice that as we've gone along here we've taken the beginning of the year

03:32

book value of the smelter as the starting point against which to take our

03:37

nine percent deduction if we take nine percent always well we'll never get to

03:42

zero or rather to the scrap value target there of ten million bucks right nine [The value in the 20th year is shown]

03:47

percent and keep just being a tiny tiny amount on those out years so in practice

03:51

at some point when companies have depreciated the crap out of their

03:55

capital assets well then they switch to straight-line depreciation in this case

03:59

after say year five our smelter would be valued at sixty two point four million

04:05

dollars ish with fifty two point four million left to depreciate to hit that

04:10

ten million dollar scrap value for about three point five million a year for the [Calculation of loss per year is shown]

04:14

remaining fifteen years until finally yes Bessie is a put out to pasture the [The factory is thrown into the trash]

04:20

gist of double declining balance sheets appreciation is to let companies pay

04:23

less in taxes early in their history having more cash to

04:27

build their businesses and grow faster at the price of showing lower accounting

04:32

earnings and that's just okay with Wall Street so yeah here's to hoping they [Someone doing an okay sign next the Wall St. sign]

04:35

deploy that cash into after know something a little more fun [Money going down a water slide]

Up Next

Finance: How Does Depreciation Affect Taxes?
40 Views

How does depreciation affect taxes? Depreciation accounts for a company’s assets losing their value over time. Companies are able to factor this...

Finance: What is a Tax Deduction?
102 Views

What is a tax deduction? Tax deductions decrease the amount of taxable income reported so that less tax is owed. For everyday civilians, these dedu...

Find other enlightening terms in Shmoop Finance Genius Bar(f)