[jamestnz]

>In my country, one of the electronics stores has this thing where you pay about 35 USD per month, each month for 24 months, to have a MacBook Air in your possession, but which you don't own. So I guess in a way it is sort of rent/leasing. But the nice thing is that after the 24 months are up, you will be able to exchange it for a new model.

Interesting. That sounds like a so-called operating lease, which is quite common in my country for business technology purchases, and other operating assets that become outdated quickly and need to be rolled over every few years. It's similar to a regular financing arrangement (where a customer may spread the full cost of acquiring some asset over X months instead of paying in full up front), but the customer never actually owns the asset.

Instead of paying the full cost gradually via monthly payments, an operating lease is structured so that there will be a somewhat large residual payment due if the customer wants to keep the asset at the end, which allows for lower monthly payments. And, as you mentioned, encourages the usual situation where the customer returns the items at the end of the term, and immediately takes out a fresh lease on some new technology.

Since the customer taking out the lease never owns the asset, they needn't depreciate it or worry about other long-term asset concerns, and can treat the payments as deductible operating expenses rather than as the purchase of a fixed asset that would go on the balance sheet. Paying a predictable expense every month for your equipment can often be more manageable than making one big capital outlay every few years, and sometimes has tax advantages too.