In January 2025, Susquehanna Inc. requested and  secured permission from the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service to compute inventories under the last-in, first-out (LIFO) method and elected to determine inventory cost under the dollar-value LIFO method. Susquehanna Inc. satisfied the commissioner that cost could be accurately determined by use of an index number computed from a representative sample selected from the company’s single inventory pool. 

Instructions

a. Why should inventories be included in (1) a balance sheet and (2) the computation of net income?

b. The Internal Revenue Code allows some accountable events to be considered differently for income tax reporting purposes and financial accounting purposes, while other accountable events must be reported the same for both purposes. Discuss why it might be desirable to report some accountable events differently for financial accounting purposes than for income tax reporting purposes.

c. Discuss the ways and conditions under which the FIFO and LIFO inventory costing methods produce different inventory valuations. Do not discuss procedures for computing inventory cost.