556
Opinion of the Court
sioner, 307 F. 2d 339, 343 (CA9 1962), provides a useful label with which to identify the total of all the imponderable qualities that attract customers to the business. See Houston Chronicle Publishing Co. v. United States, 481 F. 2d, at 1248, n. 5. This definition, however, is of little assistance to a taxpayer trying to evaluate which of its intangible assets is subject to a depreciation allowance. The value of every intangible asset is related, to a greater or lesser degree, to the expectation that customers will continue their patronage.9 But since 1918, at least some intangible assets have been depreciable. Because intangible assets do not exhaust or waste away in the same manner as tangible assets, taxpayers must establish that public taste or other socioeconomic forces will cause the intangible asset to be retired from service, and they must estimate a reasonable date by which this event will occur. See B. Bittker & M. McMahon, Federal Income Taxation of Individuals ¶12.4, p. 12-10 (1988). Intangibles such as patents and copyrights are depreciable over their "legal lives," which are specified by statute. Covenants not to compete, leaseholds, and life estates, for example, are depreciable over their useful lives that are expressly limited by contract.
9 We emphasize that while the "expectancy of continued patronage" is a serviceable description of what we generally mean when we describe an intangible asset that has no useful life and no ascertainable value, this shibboleth tells us nothing about whether the asset in question is depreciable. The dissent concedes that "the law concerning the depreciation of intangible assets related to goodwill has developed on a case-by-case basis," post, at 576, n. 4, yet, inexplicably, it suggests that "[s]uch matters are not at issue in this case, however, because the asset that Ledger seeks to depreciate is indistinguishable from goodwill," ibid. As we demonstrate below, an intangible asset with an ascertainable value and a limited useful life, the duration of which can be ascertained with reasonable accuracy, is depreciable under § 167 of the Code. The fact that it may also be described as the "expectancy of continued patronage" is entirely beside the point.
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