[Emily]

This might already be a memory trick a lot of people use, but in the off chance that someone else is stuck on the recovery periods, this may be able to help them, too! I was making a flowchart for types of property and for the depreciation treatment of each type, and realized something about the recovery period for Nonresidential MACRS property. Tax law splits up that group of assets into those placed in service *before* 5/13/93 and those placed in service *after* 5/13/93. That always seemed like such a random date for the CPA to test us on, but then I realized that the years for the two types are literally just the date backwards 🙂
– For nonresidential real estate property placed in service *after* 5/13/93, the recovery period is 39 years.
– And for nonresidential real property placed in service *before* 5/13/93, it’s 31.5 years.
– 39 31.5 = 5 13 93 –> Easy trick!

So there ya go! Still can’t think of one for personal property or for residential real estate, so this probably wasn’t groundbreaking for anyone haha. But hopefully it makes studying at least a little easier! If anyone has any memory tricks for other MACRS asset classes, let me know 🙂