Brazil Group purchases a vehicle at a cost of $50,000 on January 2, 2012. Individual components of the vehicle and useful lives are as follows.

Cost

Useful Lives

Tires

$ 6,000

2 years

Transmission

10,000

5 years

Trucks

34,000

10 years

Instructions

(a) Compute depreciation expense for 2012, assuming Brazil depreciates the vehicle as a single unit.

(b) Compute depreciation expense for 2012, assuming Brazil uses component depreciation.

(c) Why might a company want to use component depreciation to depreciate its assets?