I can see that purchased assets which have not yet become part of a sold product shouldn't be counted as expenses to deduct from income when computing profits.
My understanding of the inventory tax, as it existed years ago, is that the value of the assets themselves was the basis for computing the inventory tax.
If, for example, a machine was in the process of being manufactured and was estimated to be half-completed, then the company had to include half the value of the machine as part of their inventory. Every individual part which might someday become part of a product sale had to be accounted for.
I seem to recall that there were businesses in Nevada which consisted of warehouses that would be filled with manufacturing inventory at tax time to reduce the inventory within California. The tax on the inventory was completely independent of whether the company made a profit at all.
People are so intimidated by the US tax code that when I posted opinions earlier no one offered an opinion regarding the taxation of assets/inventory.