From bhandari at phoenix.Princeton.EDU Sat Aug 28 14:55:41 1999
Jordan, is the decision to expense--rather than
capitalize--software tax related?
It's such a joke: the guidelines are so loose that the best you can hope for is that a company comes up with a process to decide and then sticks to it in a consistent manner. Tax arbitrage is huge. My personal feeling is that if you buy into the idea of accounting periods, if you spend money today, you should write it down today. The idea that you've moved cash into an asset should only hold for assets that don't lose their value over time -- the idea that after 7 years a desk no longer has a useful value is kind of crazy if you think about it.
But we're down that road already ...
/jordan