Changing depreciation method

[Marie]

I want to elect out of macrs and use straight line.  on 10 and 20 year property I want to use sl/ads, but on 5 and 7 year property I want to use sl/gds.  the program will only let me decide one or the other.  I can't pick and choose. .  I have other years, but this year it is select all or pick form SL/ADS, and the SL/GDS is shadowed so i can't do anything.  is that the it is supposed to be or is there a glitch?

[WITAXLADY]

I get an error message to use only macrs, not switch between sl and macrs - is that the same with sl/ads, gds?

Also - how do I get it to default to macrs - mine always picks SL and I never use sl?

Thx

[Marie]

Does no one else work with the depreciation figures.  I have farmers who do not need excelerated depreciation in the beginning, and loans are set up for longer periods, which we try to do depreciation length as close as we can get to the loan period.  Last year i could pick and choose between 5 yr, 7 yr, 10 yr, etc and change from gds to ads.  Did the law change or the software?

[Terry D EA]

I am not using ATX any more so I cannot help you there. However, the law has not changed regarding depreciation. In Drake, I can select any method of depreciation that I want. There may be something or a setting in the ATX program that needs to be changed. Have you tried to contact ATX support??

[Abby Normal]

On 2/12/2017 at 8:01 PM, WITAXLADY said:

I get an error message to use only macrs, not switch between sl and macrs - is that the same with sl/ads, gds?

Also - how do I get it to default to macrs - mine always picks SL and I never use sl?

Thx

Check your Global Asset Settings in Fixed Assets. There's a check box at the bottom to not use MACRS.

About the 'switching' you want to do, are you talking about when you add a new asset for the current year, or switching in subsequent years? You can choose to use elect out of MACRS for new assets, but you can't switch methods after the asset is in service.

[Marie]

No, 2016 assets I want to pick and choose

[jklcpa]

You can choose to use the GDS method instead of MACRS, but you must use the same method for all of the assets placed in service during that year for that entire class. I do think that is what you were saying in your original post, and that it isn't necessary to use that other method for all of the classes globally. Abby is right, you must have a global box checked somewhere.

[DANRVAN]

I ran into the same issue. Elected ADS for 5 and  7 year and then tried to elect SL for 15 year but it was grayed out in global settings.

So I manually changed the 15 year to SL in the asset entry for each asset, then manually selected 15 year SL on the Elections statements. Everything came out okay!

I keep permanent depreciation schedules on Easy-ACCT business system and numbers came out the same.