Buying something before year end? What actually counts

Published 12 October 2026

Let us start at the beginning: what depreciation means

When you buy something for the business that will serve you for several years, a camera, a machine, a van, the price is not deducted in one piece in the year you buy it. The reasoning behind that is sound enough: the equipment is not used up after twelve months, it keeps working for you. So the cost is spread across the period you get something out of it. How long that period is taken to be is set out in official tables, which give a useful life for every category of asset. For a camera it is seven years.

The usual method: the same amount every year

Until recently there was essentially one way of doing this. You take the price, divide it by the number of years, and deduct the same figure annually. The camera at €3,000 over seven years comes to €429 a year, seven times over. It is easy to calculate and easy to keep track of. It has one drawback, though, and it bites at exactly the wrong moment: in the year you actually parted with the money, you deduct only a small slice of it.

The alternative: declining balance, weighted towards the front

Since July 2025 you can choose again. Instead of the same amount every year, you deduct the same percentage every year, up to 30 %, but calculated on the remaining value rather than on the original price. That means a lot in the first year, and steadily less after that.

On the same camera the difference shows up straight away:

Over the first three years that comes to €1,971 instead of €1,286.

One thing is worth putting in context here, because it is widely misunderstood: you are not deducting more overall. By the end of the useful life both methods come to the same €3,000. What changes is the timing. The benefit is a cash-flow one, not a tax one: what you do not pay now you will pay later, and in the meantime the money stays in the business. Anyone who has just absorbed a sizeable purchase will appreciate that.

And if the straight-line method should at some point give you more, which happens towards the end, once the 30 % is being applied to an already low remaining value, you may switch at any time. The other way round is not possible.

The condition: when the item is delivered

This deserves a closer look, because it is where most of the misunderstandings arise. What counts is neither the date of the order nor the date of the invoice, but when the item physically reaches you. Someone who orders a machine in December 2027 for delivery in February 2028 falls outside the window, even with everything signed in good time.

A second point that is often reported incorrectly online: the item does not have to be new. A used machine, a second-hand van, shop fittings taken over from the previous tenant are all fine, and are written off over the years of life that remain.

Why this matters right now

We are in the last quarter, the time of year when many people look at how the year has gone and wonder whether to buy something before 31 December to bring the profit down. The thinking is sound in principle. It simply works far less powerfully than people expect, and the reason is that the first year is calculated month by month.

Here is how the same camera looks depending on when it arrives:

If it reaches you in December, one twelfth of the €900 is what remains. That does not make the purchase wrong, because the rest comes off in the following years and none of it is lost. But if the aim was to move this year’s profit, December is late in the day: every month earlier is one twelfth more.

And if you would be buying in early 2027 anyway, that is perfectly fine, because there the full €900 is available to you. Just bear in mind that 2027 is the last year in which this option exists at all.

Electric vehicles are a case of their own

Pure electric vehicles have a rule all to themselves, and it is considerably more generous: 75 % in the year of purchase. More importantly, and this is the difference that matters, there is no month-by-month reduction here. The 75 % is yours in full even if the vehicle only turns up on 20 December.

To put numbers on it: a van costing €50,000 delivered just before Christmas is worth €37,500 as an electric vehicle, and €1,250 as a diesel. Here too, used vehicles are expressly allowed.

General information as at October 2026 – not advice on an individual case.
Sources: § 7 (1), (2), (2a) and (3) EStG, Act on an immediate tax investment programme (2025).

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