Accounting for license costs under the simplified tax system
Quite often a situation arises in a company when some software or license for a computer is purchased.
And then the accountant is faced with the question: how to correctly take into account this license if the company is on a simplified taxation system? To correctly answer this question, you need to understand what exactly you acquired - rights to the software or a non-exclusive right to use?
- If these are exclusive rights to use a license, and you have the corresponding document in your hands, then it will be an intangible asset, and its accounting will have to be kept on the basis of PBU 14/2007. The holder of such rights can use the result of someone’s mental activity at his own discretion, or permit or prohibit such use by other persons (Article 1229 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation).
- But if you have in your hands an act for the acquisition of a non-exclusive right to use a certain program, then this is a current expense.
We must remember that for companies that have chosen a simplified taxation regime, financial accounting is simplified, and they have the right not to comply with many of the requirements for companies on OSNO. But accounting for fixed assets and intangible assets is mandatory for all companies, regardless of the types of taxes paid.
You can read more about accounting under the simplified tax system in this article.
Accordingly, if you acquire an exclusive right that can be qualified as an intangible asset, then in accordance with PBU 14/2007 you must register it in account 04 at the actual cost of the acquisition and pay off its cost through depreciation. The useful life of an intangible asset must be determined based on the period during which the organization expects to receive economic benefits from it. It is recommended that the established deadlines be reviewed annually and updated if necessary.
On our website you can read more about the procedure for assigning SPI for intangible assets: “How to determine the useful life of intangible assets .
If you have acquired the right to use intangible assets, then payment under the agreement for such rights will be taken into account in the reporting period, and the license itself must be reflected in the off-balance sheet account of the licensor (that is, the company that uses this license).
If your company purchased a software product as a non-exclusive right, then you must remember that, in accordance with the current provisions on accounting, licenses are that rare exception that must be used as deferred expenses (FPR). That is, your company’s accounting should contain the following entries:
- Dt 97 Kt 60 - a license was purchased under a 12-month contract. worth 60,000 rubles. without VAT;
- D 25, 26, 44 Kt 97 - 5,000 rub. monthly - the license is written off as an expense as a RBP.
How did the conflict arise?
The procedure for accounting for the costs of acquiring licenses was not directly regulated in Russian legislation before, but it was indirectly mentioned in some documents. Thus, confirmation of the legality of applying the article “Deferred expenses” in the case of acquiring a license is contained in paragraphs 16 , 22 of the Guidelines for the preparation of financial statements when reorganizing organizations . They describe the algorithm of actions of accountants of reorganized organizations, if such assets are listed on the balance sheet: organizations terminating their activities in connection with reorganization in the form of a merger, as well as merging organizations during reorganization in the form of affiliation, write off deferred expenses at a time that are not included in the transfer act, for example, to acquire a license to carry out activities, the rights to which are not subject to transfer by succession (a similar opinion was expressed in the Letter of the Federal Tax Service
