Publications Unlimited has two main product lines: technical and retail publications. Each product line is managed independently by a management team, and performance evaluation includes cost management by each division. Each division is responsible for the levels of the costs directly traceable to their division and also for their share of allocated costs. To improve efficiency the company has a centralized legal services department, and these costs are allocated to each division. Actual and budgeted data are as follows: 201x Legal department hours used (actual): Technical publications division 800 Retail publications division 1,700 Total hours 2,500 Legal department costs: Actual legal department total costs $472,500 Actual legal department fixed costs $230,000 Budgeted fixed legal department costs $224,000 Budgeted variable rate per hour $95.00 Actual legal department variable costs $242,500 Actual legal department service hours provided as above Normal (planned) legal department usage is 1,000 hours for Technical publications and 1,400 hours for Retail publications. Required: a. (6 points) Assuming the purpose is product costing (done at the beginning of the year), allocate the costs of the support department using a dual charging rate. b. (6 points) Assuming the purpose is to evaluate performance (done at the end of the year), allocate the costs of the support department. c. (4 points) Why is the method used in part b a better way to evaluate performance and cost utilization than the method in part a? d. (4 points) Are all of the legal department costs allocated to the two divisions? What are the unallocated costs, if any, attributable to? Address variances in usage, FC, and VC rate.