Almost everything you own and use for personal or investment purposes is a capital asset. Examples of capital assets include a home, personal-use items like household furnishings, and stocks or bonds held as investments.
In an asset sale, the ownership of these acquired assets would change hands, with the buyer negotiating separately for each asset. In a stock sale, ownership of such assets does not change hands in the same way. The target still retains its ownership typically, even if the target has a new owner.
How to record disposal of assets Calculate the asset's depreciation amount. The first step is to ensure you have the accurate value of the asset recorded at the time of its disposal. Record the sale amount of the asset. Credit the asset. Remove all instances of the asset from other books. Confirm the accuracy of your work.
For the target, a stock sale is usually a nonevent from a tax perspective. The buyer in a stock sale does not get a step-up in tax basis in the assets that comprise the target company, and thus is not able to increase their depreciation and amortization deductions in the same way as in an asset sale.
Stocks are financial assets. They're not real assets. A financial asset is a liquid asset that gets its value from a contractual right or ownership claim.
An asset sale occurs when a business sells all or a portion of its assets. The seller, or target company, in this type of deal, is still legally the owner of the company, but no longer owns the assets sold. In a stock sale, the buyer acquires equity from the target company's shareholders.
In an asset sale, the ownership of these acquired assets would change hands, with the buyer negotiating separately for each asset. In a stock sale, ownership of such assets does not change hands in the same way. The target still retains its ownership typically, even if the target has a new owner.
The sale of a business usually is not a sale of one asset. Instead, all the assets of the business are sold. Generally, when this occurs, each asset is treated as being sold separately for determining the treatment of gain or loss. A business usually has many assets.
The benefit of an asset sale, from the buyer's perspective, is that it can select which assets and liabilities to acquire in the deal, compared to a stock sale or merger, where the buyer acquires all the assets and liabilities of the target.
In a share deal, the buyer acquires a separate legal entity, while under an asset deal the assets and liabilities acquired can be transferred directly into the purchasing legal entity. However, it is often useful to establish a separate legal entity that takes over the business that was acquired via the asset deal.