are generally somewhat longer than regular lives for most classes. Example The following example is extracted from IRS Publication 946: You bought office furniture (7-year property) for $10,000 and placed it in service on October 13, 2013. You use the furniture only for business. Multiple-asset accounts A taxpayer may group assets together into a general asset account. The grouped assets must have the same life, method of depreciation, convention, additional first year depreciation percentage, and year (or quarter or month) placed in service. Listed property or vehicles cannot be grouped with other assets. Depreciation for the account is computed as if the entire account were a single asset. Retirement of MACRS assets Gain or loss may be deferred or recognized on retirement of assets under MACRS, at the taxpayer's election. Under default rules, proceeds from disposing of a depreciable asset in a multiple asset account are recognized as ordinary income, and depreciation on the account is unaffected by the retirement. An optional method allows the asset to be removed from the account at the start of the year from retirement, in which case gain or loss is on the asset is subject to regular rules. MACRS property classes table From IRS Publication 946 Excerpt from Table B-1 (many asset classes omitted here) The depreciation deduction for automobiles is limited to $7660 (maximum) the first tax year, $4900 the second, $2950 the third year, and $1775 per year in subsequent years. MACRS GDS property classes table MACRS applicable percentage for property class From IRS Publication 946 Table A-1. Other tables are available for options different from those shown below. The 3-, 5-, 7-, and 10-year classes use 200% and the 15- and 20-year classes use 150% declining balance depreciation. All classes convert to straight-line depreciation in the optimal year, shown with an asterisk (*). A half-year depreciation is allowed in the first and last recovery years. If more than 40% of the year's MACRS property is placed in service in the last three months, then a mid-quarter convention must be used with depreciation tables that are not shown here. MACRS percentage for real property table The useful life is 39 years for nonresidential real property. Depreciation is straight line using the mid-month convention. Thus a property placed in service in January would be allowed 11½ months depreciation for recovery Year 1. See also Capital Cost Allowance - Income Tax Act (R.S.C.,