Disposing of Unproductive Equipment

Every item of equipment that you acquire for your business represents an investment of your business capital. Taken a step further, an item that is not currently being used represents capital on which the current return to your business is zero or even negative (if property taxes and insurance costs attributable to the item are taken into account). For this reason, you want to be sure to limit the amount of unproductive assets that your business owns.

Adopt a practice of taking regular inventories of all of your equipment to confirm each item's current level of use. If you come across an item that you're currently not using, try to determine whether you have a definite future use for the item that justifies the continuing cost of holding it. If you don't foresee such a future use, seriously consider selling or otherwise disposing of the item.

If you're unable to sell an unproductive item of equipment, or to use it as a trade-in on the purchase of an item you need, you may be able to generate a tax deduction by donating the item to charity or by simply abandoning (junking) it.

Related Resources

Vehicles and Your Business

Repairing and Replacing Equipment

Peer Comments

or you could sell it to us...: )

Liquidation companies, like ours, are designed to help in those situations of unproductive, or dead, assets. You may have to take a loss, but any additional cash flow that you can generate is better than none. Also, consider the deterioration rate. The longer you procrastinate in liquidating your problem inventories or unproductive assets, the more money you are losing. So be decisive, but make room for error and always have an exit strategy.

For more information you can email me at justin.eckrich@hudsonsalvagellc.com
MR_SURPLUS_INVENTORIES from Hattiesburg, MS - Add to my Personal PeerSphere - 1 year ago

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