ACCOUNTING AND FISCAL POLICIES REGARDING THE TREATMENT OF ASSETS' DEPRECIATION - NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL

A large part of fixed assets depreciate with time, a fact that requires their replacement, usually, through amortization. Amortization appears as a value equivalent of the irreversible deterioration of an asset as a result of its functioning, of the effects of natural factors, of technical progress and of other causes. A part of the assets, whose use is temporally unlimited, as, for example, lands and financial investments, is not amortized; a possible depreciation of them is covered through adjustments (provisions). Accordingly, maintenance self-financing has an important consequence upon the performance of an economic entity; it includes amortization that provides the renewal of the fixed assets that are out of use and the depreciation or loss of value adjustments of active elements and provisions 1 .