[jsnell]

That is not how write-offs work. It is strictly better for the company to sell the vehicles for their fair market value than to write them down to below market value and sell them at that lower value. (You would not write them off entirely - that would be absurd.)

Writing something down/off means that you're asserting the asset has less/no economic value left, and you can basically treat the delta between its book value and the written down value as an expense for taxation purposes. But if you e.g. write off a car from its real value of $10k to $0, it'll reduce your corporate taxes by $3k, and means you can't rent the car or sell it. So why write it off, rather than sell it for $10k? $10k > $3k.

[hef19898]

There is a difference between book value of an asset, which is a symbolic 1 $ after it is completely written off, and the price you get for said asset on sale to the open market. Nobody forces you to sell, e.g., a 20 year old CNC machine for one dollar...

Edit: Just realized, the correct term is depreciation... That's what you get after a long day, and word by word translating from German to English...