Starting the business always incurs some expenses in itself – registration, analysis, business plans etc. There’re various expenses, which depend on the business, and the situation business is started within however one thing is certain when it comes to accounting for those expenses. Those “start-up” expenses as they are called, are never capitalized as assets, as expenses you’ve made to earn future profits.

Under normal conditions expenses made to earn future profits or benefits you’d capitalize as assets – intangible, tangible or financial assets. Regardless of the form, you’d do it because those expenses are expected to generate either revenue or help reduce costs in future and as such they meet the asset definition criteria. With start-up however you’re not making specific revenue generation investments or creating a defined asset, but more building the business itself. It’s not an asset, but a business operation or a company in itself. Under IAS 38 also the start-up costs are defined as expenses not to be capitalized just because the management expects revenues to be created in the future. It’s a natural goal of a business to create revenue, isn’t it?

After you’ve made your initial expenses to the business like registering what needs to be registered, written your business plan and made those first calls for receiving financing etc., all those related expenses are just the start-up costs and are to be incurred as a part of your current period’s results rather than taken as assets onto your balance sheet. You didn’t really create an asset, but started your business. That’s an asset, but through equity, which is, your money invested into the company.