Russian economic term

[Yoshimasa Tsuji]

I don't think "moral'nyj iznos" is used in layman's context,
hence not exactly (ustarelyj)"dated/outdated". "write-off" is
close,but not quite.

  Incidentally, the Russian word "ehkonomist" usually means
an accountant, senior to "kasir", but junior to "bukhgal'ter".
  She is supposed to know how to calculate "iznos" of every item
in her organization. I regret to have little information about
how they actually do that in Russia. I assume the
extent of "iznos" used to be defined somewhere in ministerial
instructions. Please refer to somebody knowledgeable of Soviet methods of
enterprise accounting.
  Having seen so many pre-WW2 machine tools in Russian factories
recently, I find it hard to assume the term is properly understood
by the Russians. I actually read a couple of Soviet textbooks
on "depreciation" as a student thirty years ago, but I failed to
understand anything at all.


Cheers,
Tsuji