On 27 September 2019, just over a year since delivering judgement in another matter with very similar facts, the Supreme Court of Appeal in CSARS v Atlas Copco South Africa (Pty) Ltd (834/2018) [2019] ZASCA 124 gave a judgement on the valuation of trading stock for income tax purposes.   The general (and oversimplified) principle is that taxpayers are allowed, as a deduction, the value of opening trading stock during a year of assessment, while the value of the closing trading stock is required to be included in taxable income. From a tax perspective, the higher the value attributed to closing stock at the end of a tax year, the lower the cost of sales for that […]