>>>>>But if inflation is high wouldn't LIFO make inventory valuation look low ?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>They wanted cost to look high, minimizing taxable profit.
>>>
>>>Ah OK. I guess it's a question of which way you want to slant the figures :-}
>>
>>Well, corporate taxes aren't just spin / slant. Those are real dollars coming off the bottom line.
>That gets to the point, the choice of LIFO or FIFO has no bearing on what is physically occurring.
>
>I setup a system years ago where they had parallel LIFO and FIFO, using LIFO for tax purposes and FIFO for internal reporting. The whole thing ran on an IBM 1401, no disc drives, eventually converted to COBOL on a 360/40 that did have disc drives. The inventory receivers detail was what made it work (and of course the usage going out in sales and adjustments of physical to the computer inventory). Because we had to maintain layers for LIFO and FIFO the detail file was always quite substantial. Inventory, BOM, MRP, etc. can be interesting.

I blame my gray and missing hair on inventory control ;-)