Lewis and Stark is a public accounting firm that offers two primary services, audit-ing 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 over-head 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.

Instructions
(a) Using traditional product costing as proposed by the tax partners, compute the total overhead cost assigned to both services (audit and tax) of Lewis and Stark.
(b) (1) Using activity-based costing, prepare a schedule showing the computations of the activity-based overhead rates (per cost driver).
(2) Prepare a schedule assigning each activity's overhead cost pool to each service based on the use of the cost drivers.
(c) Comment on the comparative overhead cost for the two services under both traditional costing and ABC.

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Expected Use of Expected Use of Cost Drivers Estimated Costper Service Overhead Drivers Audit Activity Cost Pools Cost Drivers ax Employee training Typing and Direct labor dollars Number of reports/ $216,000 $1,800,000 $1,100,000 $700,000 secretarial Computing Facility rental Travel 76,200 204,000 142,500 81,300 $720,000 800 1,700 60,000 27,000 33,000 forms Number of minutes Number of employees Per expense reports 2,500 18 Direct 56,000 25,300 40