Each Year a Company Has Been Investing an Increasingly Greater

Each year a company has been investing an increasingly greater amount in machinery. Since there is a large number of small items with relatively similar useful lives, the company has been applying straight-line depreciation at a uniform rate to the machinery as a group. The ratio of this group's total accumulated depreciation to the total cost of the machinery has been steadily increasing and now stands at .75 to 1.00. The most likely explanation for this increasing ratio is the

A) company should have been using one of the accelerated methods of depreciation.
B) estimated average life of the machinery is less than the actual average useful life.
C) estimated average life of the machinery is greater than the actual average useful life.
D) company has been retiring fully depreciated machinery that should have remained in service.