U.S. GAAP inventory is written down to the lower of its cost or market. From there any subsequent recoveries of impairment write-downs can never be recovered. We refer to these as impairments and they do occur sometime within inventory. From a manipulative stance, the write-down would be passed to the income statement as an expense (usually part of COGS) so this type of adjustment would reduce tax liability. Any other advantages to this activity that you can think of?