The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 includes various tax breaks for businesses and individuals.
According to Mondaq, this includes a 50% bonus depreciation to property purchased and placed into service in 2009. This tax legislation allows office tenants to accelerate the normal cost recovery schedules for depreciable property, by allowing a first year write off of half the cost of qualified depreciable property (e.g., computers, equipment, certain land and tenant space improvements, etc.). The other 50% of a qualified item would be depreciated according to its normal depreciation schedule, resulting in well over half the cost being written off for tax purposes in the year of purchase.
