Bridges and Lloyd, an accounting firm, provides consulting and tax planning services. For many years, the firm's total administrative cost (currently $307,000) has been allocated to services on the basis of billable hours to clients. A recent analysis found that 65% of the firm's billable hours to clients resulted from tax planning services, while 35% resulted from consulting services.

The firm, contemplating a change to activity-based costing, has identified three components of administrative cost, as follows:

Staff Support$199,000In-house computing charges69,000Miscellaneous office costs39,000Total$307,000

A recent analysis of staff support found a strong correlation between the number of staff personnel and the number of clients served (consulting, 15; tax planning, 60). In contrast, in-house computing and miscellaneous office cost varied directly with the number of computer hours logged and number of client transactions, respectively. Consulting consumed 30% of the firm's computer hours and had 15% of the total client transactions.

Assuming the use of activity-based costing, the proper percentage to use in allocating staff support costs to tax planning services is:

Multiple Choice

• 15%.
• 60%.
• 65%.
• 80%.
• 75%.