Using Microsoft Excel’s Variable Declining Balance Depreciation Function
Making tax accounting depreciation calculations for return preparation or tax planning purposes?? Microsoft Excel can help. Excel’s VBD, or variable rate depreciation, function lets you easily calculate variable declining balance s depreciation amounts, including those based on the MACRS depreciation convention.
The VDB function calculates declining balance depreciation for an asset given the cost, its salvage value, estimated economic life, the starting accounting period and the ending accounting period for which depreciation is being calculated, the factor at which the balancem declines, and, optionally, a switch-to-straight-line switch which is set to either TRUE or FALSE. If you set this switch to TRUE, Excel doesn’t switch to straight-line at the point when straight-line depreciation exceeds declining balance depreciation. If you set this value to FALSE, Excel does switch to straight-line. If you don’t set the optional switch-to-straightline switch to TRUE, Excel sets this value to FALSE.