Michelin is considering going ‘‘lights-out’’ in the mixing area of the business that operates 24/7. Currently, personnel with a loaded cost of \($600,000\) per year are used to manually weigh real rubber, synthetic rubber, carbon black, oils, and other components prior to manual insertion in a Banbary mixer that provides a homogeneous blend of rubber for making tires. New technology is available that has the reliability and consistency desired to equal or exceed the quality of blend now achieved manually. It requires an investment of \($3.75\) million, with \($80,000\) per year operational costs, and will replace all the manual effort described above.

a. How are the current manual expenditures handled for tax purposes?

b. How would the new technology expenditures be handled for tax purposes?