How was it tax deductible since he essentially was keeping all the value of the product?
I can't buy a stack of cars and then donate a ashtray to the Salvation Army and claim the car back?
I can't buy a stack of cars and then donate a ashtray to the Salvation Army and claim the car back?
If you want to buy a stack of cars, keep the invoice papers and donate the car feel free
Or that he went to all that effort to keep something of zero value.
That he could extract additional value through the work of removing the bar code does not implicitly reduce the value of the pudding itself.
It is not unusual for it to be possible to extract more value by splitting up a product and selling or taking advantage of parts separately. A lot of businesses are even built on buying lots and separating them to extract value as people are often willing to pay over the odds for a smaller part, or parts of the lots may have been undervalued (as clearly was the case here).