In 1985 the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions published a paper on recommended depreciation time on capital assets for the public sector. This paper should only be seen as guidance, but many municipals use it without any further investigations.

Swedish municipals are not like private companies; one very distinguished difference is that they are not allowed to make any profit. The municipals in Sweden are regulated by the constitution law which means that they can not go bankrupt. The public and the private sector have different legislations that result in different ways on how they for example treat depreciations. The aim of this essay is to describe and explain the relationship between the useful life and depreciation. The aim is also to identify the adapting legislation and recommendations.

We have designed our hypotheses based on the theory we have, about municipalities, municipal operations and depreciations. These hypotheses are used in three different kinds of categories which affect the correlation between depreciation and useful life. The categories used are municipal, political and human factors.

The survey was conducted by contacting a total of 67 municipals. Since a large number of the municipals have merged together in a mutual organisation we encountered a small problem. Within the organisation they cooperate when it comes to emergency services and sewage treatment works.

Our analysis indicates a relationship between the dependent variables and some independent variables. This result should be taken with caution since we can not prove that the result is correct. We can on the other hand with all certainty prove that the depreciation period does not reflect the useful life and that many municipalities use the outdated depreciation paper.