What Is Considered Office Equipment for Taxes?

For tax purposes, office equipment is tangible property your business uses to earn income that has a useful life of more than one year — computers, copiers, desks, chairs, filing cabinets, phone systems, and similar items. Anything used up within a year, like paper, ink, or pens, is a supply instead. The distinction matters because equipment is capitalized and its cost is recovered through depreciation or one of the immediate-expensing elections, while supplies are deducted in the year you buy or use them.

What the IRS Treats as Office Equipment

Two features define office equipment: it is tangible personal property you can physically touch and move, and it has a useful life extending beyond a single tax year. On your books, it shows up as a capitalized asset, with the cost recognized gradually rather than all at once.

The IRS sorts office assets into two depreciation categories, and the category sets the recovery period:

Office machinery — 5-year property. Computers, laptops, copiers, calculators, scanners, and similar technology. Communication hardware such as enterprise phone systems, video conferencing units, and networking equipment generally falls here too.
Office furniture and fixtures — 7-year property. Desks, chairs, filing cabinets, bookshelves, and safes.

The recovery period is the default schedule for spreading the cost across annual depreciation deductions if you do not elect to expense the item immediately under Section 179 or bonus depreciation.¹

Equipment or Supplies? Where the Line Falls

The dividing line is durability and cost. Supplies are consumables used up in roughly 12 months — paper, toner, pens, sticky notes, cleaning products. Equipment lasts multiple years and usually costs meaningfully more.

Even so, tracking depreciation on every low-cost item is impractical, so the IRS provides a shortcut called the de minimis safe harbor.

The De Minimis Safe Harbor

The safe harbor lets you deduct lower-cost items immediately instead of capitalizing them. The threshold depends on whether your business has audited financial statements:

Without an applicable financial statement: up to $2,500 per invoice or per item.
With an applicable financial statement (financial statements filed with the SEC or certified audited statements prepared by a CPA): up to $5,000 per invoice or per item.

If you elect the safe harbor, it applies to every qualifying purchase that year; you cannot pick which items to expense and which to capitalize.² Make the election by attaching a statement titled “Section 1.263(a)-1(f) de minimis safe harbor election” to your timely filed return for the year.

Incidental Versus Non-Incidental Supplies

Supplies themselves split in two. Incidental supplies — minor items you keep on hand without tracking inventory, like pens, toner, and trash bags — are deducted in the year you pay for them. Non-incidental supplies, where you do track usage or inventory, are deducted in the year you actually use them.²

Mixed-Use Items: The 50 Percent Rule

If you use a piece of equipment for both business and personal purposes, only the business portion counts. A printer used 70 percent for business and 30 percent for personal projects lets you deduct or depreciate 70 percent of the cost, and you need to document that ratio each year.

The more-than-50-percent business-use threshold is critical. If business use falls to 50 percent or below in any year after the equipment is placed in service, three consequences follow:³

You must switch from accelerated MACRS to the slower straight-line method under the Alternative Depreciation System (ADS) for that year and every year after.
Any depreciation you claimed above what straight-line would have allowed, including Section 179 deductions, is recaptured as ordinary income.
You lose Section 179 and bonus depreciation eligibility for that property going forward.

Cell phones were removed from the “listed property” category in 2010, so an employer-provided phone used primarily for business no longer requires the detailed usage logs that other mixed-use equipment demands.⁴

How Office Equipment Is Deducted

Once an item is classified as office equipment, you have three ways to recover its cost. Most businesses combine them.

Regular Depreciation Under MACRS

The default method is the Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System (MACRS). Its General Depreciation System (GDS) assigns the recovery period based on asset type: five years for computers and office machinery, seven years for office furniture and fixtures.¹

MACRS also applies a “convention” that decides how much depreciation you get in the first and last years. The standard is the half-year convention: property is treated as placed in service at the midpoint of the year, so you get half a year of depreciation in year one no matter when you bought it. If more than 40 percent of your total equipment purchases for the year happen in the last three months, the mid-quarter convention applies instead, and each asset is treated as placed in service at the midpoint of the quarter it actually began being used.⁵

Section 179 Expensing

Section 179 lets you deduct the full cost of qualifying office equipment in the year you place it in service. For tax years beginning in 2026, you can expense up to $2,560,000 of qualifying property. The ceiling phases out dollar-for-dollar once total equipment purchases for the year exceed $4,090,000 and disappears entirely at $6,650,000.⁶

Three limits apply:

The equipment must be used more than 50 percent for your trade or business. A laptop used 60 percent for business lets you expense only that portion of the cost.⁷
The Section 179 deduction cannot exceed your taxable business income for the year, though unused amounts carry forward.
For an SUV rated above 6,000 pounds, the Section 179 deduction is capped at $32,000 for 2026.⁶

Bonus Depreciation

Bonus depreciation lets you write off a percentage of an asset’s cost in the first year on top of, or instead of, Section 179. The One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act permanently restored 100 percent bonus depreciation for qualifying property acquired after January 19, 2025.⁸ Office equipment you buy and place in service in 2026 can be fully deducted in the first year, and unlike Section 179, bonus depreciation is not capped at your taxable business income.⁹

To qualify, the property must have a MACRS recovery period of 20 years or less (office equipment easily meets this), and its original use must begin with you, or a used-property acquisition must meet the statutory requirements.¹⁰ The more-than-50-percent business-use rule applies here too.

Section 179 is flexible: you choose how much to expense within the limit, and it cannot create a loss. Bonus depreciation is all-or-nothing for each asset class but can generate a net operating loss. Many businesses apply Section 179 first, then use bonus depreciation on what remains.

Where You Report It

Form 4562 is the form for reporting depreciation, amortization, and Section 179 elections. You list each asset with a short description (“laptop,” “office desk”), its cost, the date placed in service, and the method and recovery period used.¹¹ Form 4562 attaches to your income tax return — Schedule C for sole proprietors, or the appropriate return for partnerships, S corporations, and C corporations. The Section 179 election must be made on a Form 4562 filed with the original return for the year the property was placed in service, or with a timely amended return.⁷

Keep the supporting records — purchase invoices, proof of payment, and documentation of business-use percentage — for at least three years after filing the return that claims the deduction, and ideally for the full recovery period of the asset.¹² The same records make depreciation recapture straightforward if you later sell the equipment, since a portion of any gain equal to prior depreciation is taxed as ordinary income under section 1245.¹³

1
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 946 (2024), How To Depreciate Property
2
Internal Revenue Service. Tangible Property Regulations – Frequently Asked Questions
3
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 587 (2024), Business Use of Your Home
4
IRS.gov. IRS Issues Guidance on Tax Treatment of Cell Phones
5
eCFR. 26 CFR 1.168(d)-1 – Applicable Conventions Half-Year and Mid-Quarter Conventions
6
IRS.gov. Rev. Proc. 2025-32
7
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 4562 (2025)
8
Internal Revenue Service. Interim Guidance on Additional First Year Depreciation – Notice 2026-11
9
Internal Revenue Service. One, Big, Beautiful Bill Provisions
10
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S. Code 168 – Accelerated Cost Recovery System
11
IRS.gov. 2025 Instructions for Form 4562 – Depreciation and Amortization
12
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 583, Starting a Business and Keeping Records
13
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S. Code 1245 – Gain From Dispositions of Certain Depreciable Property