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(October 2006) posted on Sun Oct 15, 2006

IRS Code Section 179 may make it easier than you think.

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By Darek Johnson

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It's "boxeo" night at the Real Enchilada restaurant in the Northern Kentucky city of Florence. At the back of the room stands a big-screen television set ,where bantamweight boxers Jose Antonio Rivera and Robert "The Ghost" Guerrero thrash one another. Spanish-speaking construction workers rest at a nearby table; hot plates of peppered Mexican food smolder in front of them. They're quietly cheering "El Fantasma" while drinking cold Pacifico from glass bottles. Ed, too, has a bottle of Pacifico. He's ordered the chicken enchiladas with white cheese and red salsa. Good choice. He can't watch the fight, though, because I keep asking him questions, like, how does a signmaker know (for sure) that it's time to buy a new digital-print machine, and where does one get the money?

On these pages, Anya Rao, ST's senior associate editor, has presented photos of great-looking, grand-format, digital prints. She has intended this display to inspire your imagination because, today, many digital-print machine manufacturers are making medium-price, "production" printers that are sized and priced to fit within a medium-sized shop's quarters and budget. Thus, it's possible that your shop could soon produce large-format work or, if you already have a digital printer, produce even more work.

In past issues, I've written about inks, print-machine technology, prepress, shops and other critical printmaking minutiae, but here, I'm looking at the money side of purchasing a new, grand-format print machine. To accomplish this, I interviewed Ed Grelle, a friend and certified public accountant (CPA), to learn his recommended equipment-buying practices and, better, gain knowledge of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Code Section 179 write-offs and how they could save you money — or, as Ed said, accrue the payment monies for you, through an accelerated depreciation schedule.