Hi all. I have a couple questions regarding the "hobby-turned-business" debate.

So I have personally hit the point where I will be making a non-negligible annual profit on my breeding projects. Thus, I'm interested in creating either a single-member LLC or DBA as a sole proprietor. My initial concern regards accounting for animals, equipment (caging, racks, incubators), etc. that I have already purchased. The bulk of my purchasing occurred in 2013 & 2014.

From my understanding, I will be depreciating these "assets" over some time period, and writing them off following standard depreciation protocol. I've seen a 5-year depreciation schedule referenced for animals in a few instances. Does anyone have some experience with this that could share any opinions?

For instance, if I spent $5,000 on animals in 2013, would I be able to amend my 2014 tax return to include a $1,000 depreciation expense? Or is it unfeasible to amend past returns to include that type of expense? If not, I suppose I would be looking $3,000 in assets at this point in time, 2 years after purchase, with 3 years left of "useful life".

Would love to start a discussion on this topic, it has been of interest to me for a while.