Review article
AMORTIZATION FROM THE ASPECT OF COST, TAXES AND ACCOUNTING
Kuzman Vujević
Abstract
Due to high share in the structure of costs, the maritime economy pays special attention to amortization as a cost, tax and accounting factor. As in the case of other fixed assets, there are two main causes for the gradual decrease of the ship's acquisition value: physical wear and economic obsolescence. The physical wear is the result of everyday exploitation of the ship through mechanical wear, the effects of the sea, weather conditions etc., which gradually diminish the value of the ship. The economic obsolescence and decrement of the ship value emerges as the result of new technological – technical achievements. Shipyards are progressively producing modern and technologically and technically better ships, thus replacing old and obsolescent ones. The bringing of new regulations or amendment of existing ones may cause economical obsolescence of the ship. In order to compensate mentioned decremented value of the ship amortization has been calculated. According to the rule book on amortization, rates of amortization are recognized as a tax-exempt writeoff. The management of a shipping enterprise is liable to determine the methods and mode of calculating the amortization through accounting policies or by means of an act on amortization. The management may choose to apply the accounting policy of temporal or functional amortization. In addition to the mentioned methods some shipping companies have been applying a method of free amortization of ships, which enables manipulation with nominal amortization in order to pay higher or lower dividends to stockholders, in other words to pay higher or lower profit tax. From the aspect of accountancy, when the highest acceptable amortization tax rates are applied, the balance does not objectively denote the financial status of the profit tax payer. The statement on profit does not show the achieved business results objectively. In the income and expenditures statement, the profit shown is undervalued for the amount of the difference in the amortization. In this paper the amortization from the aspect of cost, tax and accounting has been studied.
Keywords
amortization; fixed assets; current assets; fixed costs; variable costs; functional amortization; time coordinated amortization
Hrčak ID:
3953
URI
Publication date:
1.12.2005.
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