Plant Asset Disposals, Natural Resources, and Intangible Assets

Disposal of plant assets

All plant assets except land eventually wear out or become inadequate or obsolete and must be sold, retired, or traded for new assets. When disposing of a plant asset, a company must remove both the asset's cost and accumulated depreciation from the accounts. Overall, then, all plant asset disposals have the following steps in common:

• Bring the asset's depreciation up to date.
• Record the disposal by:

(a) Writing off the asset's cost.

(b) Writing off the accumulated depreciation.

(c) Recording any consideration (usually cash) received or paid or to be received or paid.

(d) Recording the gain or loss, if any.

As you study this section, remember these common procedures accountants use to record the disposal of plant assets. In the paragraphs that follow, we discuss accounting for the (1) sale of plant assets, (2) retirement of plant assets without sale, (3) destruction of plant assets, (4) exchange of plant assets, and (5) cost of dismantling and removing plant assets.