First, I would like to thank the 10 people who responded to my query about
equipment amortization. Unfortunately, I was not sufficiently explicit in
what I meant by "amortization", and a couple of people came down on me
pretty hard. What I mean by "amortization" is the paying off of a loan by
installments. The loan would be a loan from the your company or
university- and of course would not include research grants (which are
grants and not loans).
There was one industrial respondent and one
academic respondent who indicated that they did some amortization as I have
described above. The rest were academic respondents who indicated that
they did not- so I can only assume that it is uncommon in academic circles.
There is a mechanism to do it here, and I may have to resort to it since
the other methods we have in the past used to purchase lower cost
($1K-$20K) equipment (state equipment money, or "passing the hat" around
the faculty) have either dried up (state money due to our tax revolting
electorate) or are no longer tolerated by the auditors ("passing the
hat"). This has left me in the position of having NMR rates which are
dropping because the use of the machines is going up while the costs are
not, and yet being unable to purchase any "durable goods" which cost over
$1K (of course I would have no problem buying $5K worth of liquid Helium- a
non durable good). It is a perverse situation, and yet it is for real (if
anyone else finds themselves in this situation I would be interested in
hearing from them).
Thanks again.
Tom Pratum
Univ of Washington
pratum@uwchem.chem.washington.edu