An asset that has been depreciating somewhere else arrives carrying figures. Prior Depreciation Taken is where those figures go. It is the first thing to check on any asset that did not start its life in DepreciationPro.
Where it is
On the asset's Tax tab, between Elections and Vehicle Information. It is always there, on every asset, whether or not it carries history.
On the Add asset form the same section sits between Asset Details and Depreciation Settings, collapsed behind an Enter prior depreciation button.
The section's own line reads:
Depreciation already taken in prior years — as imported, rolled over, or recorded here. Edits apply on Save & Recalculate.
The four fields
Field | What goes in it |
Regular Prior Depreciation | Regular depreciation only. The portion not entered as §179, bonus, or other |
Prior §179 Depreciation | §179 actually deducted in prior years |
Prior Bonus Depreciation | Bonus taken in a prior year |
Prior Other Depreciation | Anything already taken outside the §179 and bonus buckets |
A Total Prior Depreciation row under them adds up what you have typed, live, before you save.
The first field is not a total. Its own hint says so: "Regular depreciation only — the portion not entered as §179, bonus, or other. Not your total prior depreciation." Putting the whole prior figure there and repeating pieces of it below double-counts.
The §179 field is prior history, not this year's decision. This year's §179 goes in the Section 179 Election field under Elections, higher up the same tab.
What each one does to the numbers
The three taken figures, §179 plus bonus plus other, set the asset's remaining MACRS basis. DepreciationPro derives it as original cost minus those three, floored at zero, and depreciates forward on that.
When the stored basis matches that arithmetic exactly, a line appears under the fields confirming it:
Remaining MACRS basis $12,400.00 derived from cost minus the recorded prior §179/bonus/other amounts.
Regular Prior Depreciation is kept separate from those three. It feeds the asset's total accumulated figure and the cap that stops an asset recovering more than its cost.
All four are applied from year two onwards. On an asset placed in service in the return's own tax year they are not counted into the current-year figures.
Enter it, then save
Type the figures and click Save & recalculate. Nothing about this section saves on its own.
A blank is not a zero
Leave a field empty and DepreciationPro records that nothing was ever captured. Type 0 and it records a real zero. They are different, and the difference carries through imports, splits, and rollovers.
The amber notice on a current-year asset
Enter a prior figure above zero on an asset placed in service in the return's own tax year and a note appears:
Prior depreciation was entered for an asset placed in service in 2026 — this return's tax year. A current-year §179 or bonus amount is an election (see Elections above), not prior history.
It reports what it sees and nothing more. It never blocks the save, and you can leave the figures as they are.
There is no as-of date here
The tax fields take amounts only. The date the schedule works from is the asset's placed-in-service date.
That is different from the GAAP book, where an accumulated balance does carry an As-of Date field alongside it. The two are separate records that never read each other. See Bring accumulated book depreciation across from another system.
Assets that already have it
An asset that has been through a year-end rollover in DepreciationPro carries its own history and needs nothing here. So does one whose import file supplied the columns. This section is for filling gaps and for correcting what came across.