Cite as: 507 U. S. 546 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
that the insurance expirations constituted a "mass asset" the useful life of which had to be "determined from facts relative to the whole, and not from experience with any particular policy or account involved." Id., at 443, 537 F. 2d, at 454. The court also noted, however, that the mass-asset rule does not prevent a depreciation deduction "where the expirations as a single asset can be valued separately and the requisite showing made that the useful life of the information contained in the intangible asset as a whole is of limited duration." Id., at 439, 537 F. 2d, at 452. All the policies were scheduled to expire within three years, but their continuing value lay in their being renewable. Based on statistics gathered over a 5-year period, the taxpayer was able to estimate that the mass asset had a useful life of not more than 10 years from the date of purchase. Any renewals after that time would be attributable to the skill, integrity, and reputation of the taxpayer rather than to the value of the original expirations. "The package of expirations demonstrably was a wasting asset." Id., at 444, 537 F. 2d, at 455. The court ruled that the taxpayer could depreciate the cost of the collection of insurance expirations over the useful life of the mass asset.
In Citizens & Southern Corp. v. Commissioner, 91 T. C. 463 (1988), aff'd, 919 F. 2d 1492 (CA11 1990), the taxpayer argued that it was entitled to depreciate the bank-deposit base acquired in the purchase of nine separate banks.11 The
taxpayer sought to depreciate the present value of the income it expected to derive from the use of the balances of deposit accounts existing at the time of the bank purchases.
11 The term "deposit base" describes "the intangible asset that arises in a purchase transaction representing the present value of the future stream of income to be derived from employing the purchased core deposits of a bank." Citizens & Southern Corp. v. Commissioner, 91 T. C., at 465. The value of the deposit base rests upon the "ascertainable probability that inertia will cause depositors to leave their funds on deposit for predictable periods of time." Id., at 500.
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