ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Recovery of capital doctrine

The recovery of capital doctrine is a way to understand how much money you can get back from an investment. Imagine you have a piggy bank with ten dollars. One day, you take five dollars from the piggy bank and use it to buy some candy. Now you only have five dollars left in the piggy bank. But the good news is that if you sell your candy for ten dollars, you will have your original ten dollars back. That's because you recovered the five dollars you took out of the piggy bank, plus the five dollars you didn't spend.

Now, imagine you have a big piggy bank with a lot of money inside it. This is like investing in a project, like building a house. The house costs a lot of money to build, and you have to borrow some money to pay for it. But once the house is built, you can sell it for a lot of money. That's because the house is worth more than the money you spent to build it. The money you get back from selling the house is like recovering your capital, which means getting back the money you invested.

The recovery of capital doctrine is a legal concept that helps people who invest in projects like building a house. It says that you can recover your capital before you have to pay taxes on any profit you make from selling the house. This means you don't have to pay taxes on the money you spent on building the house. You only have to pay taxes on the money you made from selling it. This makes it easier for people to invest in projects because they don't have to worry about paying extra taxes on their initial investment.