Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
An NIH grant budgets 120,000 USD for a confocal microscope, excluded from MTDC.
- Is an instance
A Horizon Europe project budgets equipment depreciation at 30,000 EUR per year over the project's 4-year duration.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A reagent kit costing 200 GBP is a consumable, not equipment.
- Not an instance
Personnel costs are not equipment costs.
Editorial commentary
Equipment, for grant-budgeting purposes, is tangible personal property with a useful life of more than one year whose per-unit acquisition cost meets a capitalization threshold. Below that threshold, an item is ordinarily budgeted as a supply cost instead.
A "lesser of" test, not a flat $10,000 line
Under 2 CFR 200.1, equipment means a per-unit acquisition cost that equals or exceeds the lesser of the capitalization level the recipient has established for its own financial-statement purposes, or $10,000. An institution that capitalizes at $5,000 for its own accounting must use $5,000 as its federal-grant equipment threshold too — $10,000 is a ceiling default for institutions with no lower internal policy, not a number every recipient can rely on. ($5,000 was the prior federal default before the April 2024 Uniform Guidance revision raised the ceiling, effective for awards issued on or after October 1, 2024.)
MTDC exclusion
Equipment is on 2 CFR 200.1’s list of costs excluded from Modified Total Direct Cost — an institution’s negotiated indirect-cost rate is not applied to it, unlike travel.
Not the micro-purchase threshold
Easy to conflate with equipment’s own threshold, but a different question and a different authority: micro-purchase ($15,000) is a procurement-method threshold set by the FAR at 48 CFR 2.101, not by 2 CFR 200, and governs how competitively an item must be procured — not whether it counts as equipment.
Non-US treatment and dedicated funding
Horizon Europe generally permits only depreciation of equipment as an eligible direct cost, not the full purchase price, except in lump-sum grants. Dedicated capital-equipment programmes — NSF Major Research Instrumentation (MRI), UKRI Infrastructure Fund awards, Wellcome Multi-User Equipment grants — fund larger items as their explicit purpose, rather than as a line within a research grant budget.
Disposition at project end
US federal awards apply 2 CFR 200.313: equipment with a current fair-market value of $10,000 or more per unit at disposal generally requires the recipient to retain it (paying the agency its share of value), sell it (sharing proceeds), or transfer it as the agency directs; lower-value items may typically be retained, sold, or disposed of with no further obligation, subject to the award’s specific terms.
References
- 2 CFR 200.1 (equipment definition); 2 CFR 200.439 (Equipment and other capital expenditures); 2 CFR 200.313 (Equipment disposition); 48 CFR 2.101 (FAR micro-purchase threshold).
Also known as
Capital cost (grant) · Equipment purchase · Capitalised equipment
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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