Question

When someone is determining plant, property and equipment total assets , does one need to subtract current accumulated depreciation ?

Answer 1

this years' PPE = last year's PPE - current year depreciation of PPE

so I understand that the answer would be yes
PPE @ BS = (purchase price + all the additional costs) - acum. depr

Answer 2

I believe BBB´s answer is correct. The intuition behind it is that corporate accounts need to reflect as best as possible the real situation of a company. When you look at the value of the assets of a company what you are interested in is their value today, not the acquisition cost. By substracting depreciation from the purchase price, you approximate the purchase cost to the realizable value of the asset today thus giving a more accurate picture of the true worth of the assets of a company.