DEPLETION Definition

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DEPLETION is the process of cost allocation that assigns the original cost of a natural resource to the periods benefited. For example: a mining company purchases mineral rights to a deposit for $5 million for a period of ten years. The cost of the natural resource, $5 million, will be depleted over the ten years of the benefit; i.e., it is the physical exhaustion of a natural resource (e.g., timber, oil and coal).

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DOUBLE-ENTRY ACCOUNTING is a system of recording transactions in a way that maintains the equality of the accounting equation. The accounting technique records each transaction as both a credit and a debit. Double-entry bookkeeping (DEB) or accounting was developed during the fifteenth century and was first recorded in 1494 as a system by the Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli.

HIRE AND PURCHASE AGREEMENT is a contract (more fully called contract of hire with an option of purchase) in which a person hires goods for a specified period and at a fixed rent, with the added condition that if he shall retain the goods for the full period and pay all the installments of rent as they become due the contract shall determine and the title vest absolutely in him, and that if he chooses he may at any time during the term surrender the goods and be quit of any liability for future installments upon the contract. In the United States such a contract is generally treated as a conditional sale, and the term hire purchase is also sometimes applied to a contract in which the hirer is not free to avoid future liability by surrender of the goods. In England, however, if the hirer does not have this right the contract is a sale.

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