Activity Based Costing

P4-5A (a-c)

Hy and Lowe is a public firm that offers two primary services, auditing and tax return preparation. A controversy has developed between the partners of the two service lines as to who is contributing the greater amount to the bottom line. The area of contention is the assignment of overhead. The tax partners argue for assigning overhead on the basis of 40% of direct labor dollars, while the audit partners argue for implementing activity-based costing. The partners agree to use next year's budgeted data for purposes of analysis and comparison. The following overhead data are collected to develop the comparison.
Activity Cost Pool Cost Driver Estimated Overhead Expected
Use of Cost Drivers Expected Use of
Cost Drivers per Service
Audit Tax
Employee training Direct labor dollars $216,000 $1,800,000 $1,000,000 $800,000
Typing and secretarial Number of reports/forms 76,200 2,500 600 1,900
Computing Number of minutes 204,000 60,000 25,000 35,000
Facility rental Number of employees 142,500 40 22 18
Travel Per expense reports 81,300 Direct 56,000 25,300
$720,000

Using traditional product costing as proposed by the tax partners, compute the total overhead cost assigned to both services (audit and tax) of Hy and Lowe.
Overhead assigned to audit $

Overhead assigned to tax $

(1) Using activity-based costing compute the activity-based overhead rates (per cost driver).
(2) Complete the schedule assigning each activity's overhead cost pool to each product based on the use of cost drivers. (Round the activity-based overhead rates to 2 decimal places, e.g. 10.50 and cost assigned to 0 decimal places, e.g. 125.)
Activity Cost Pools Audit Tax
Expected Use
of Cost Drivers Activity-Based Overhead Rate Cost Assigned Expected Use
of Cost Drivers Activity-Based Overhead Rates Cost Assigned
Employee training $
$
$
$
$
$

Typing & Secretarial

Computing

Facility Rental

Travel
Direct

Direct

Total cost assigned $
$

Classify each of the activities as a value-added activity or a non-value-added activity.
Activity
Employee training

Typing and secretarial

Computing

Facility rental

Travel