Ezy Tax is a tax accounting firm offering an income tax preparation service for small businesses...
Fantastic news! We've Found the answer you've been seeking!
Question:
Transcribed Image Text:
Ezy Tax is a tax accounting firm offering an income tax preparation service for small businesses and individuals. The firm charges individuals $149 per return and small businesses are charged $399. Individual returns are normally relatively straightforward to process and the firm uses the ATO's free etax software to prepare and submit the returns. The individual returns do not tend to vary much in the workload required to complete them. The processing of small business tax returns is more complex and requires a specific software package that EzyTax has purchased for an annual licence fee of $25,000 plus $2.50 for each return processed. Processing of business returns varies as to the workload each one requires. The owner-manger of the firm, Jordan Pickford, is concerned that last year only a small profit was made despite the volume of work being higher than ever. She commented: "We are good tax accountants for our clients but we don't seem to be keeping our own house in order!" To help improve the situation Pickford decided to recruit a dedicated management accountant with a proven track record, Yerry Mina. On her first day in the job, Pickford tells Mina "I want you to get to the bottom of our recent poor profitability but I do not want you to buy in expensive 'solutions' which may quickly become out of date and are still prone to error. Also any new systems must be understandable to staff and in some instances clients, whom we must justify our price to." One of the first concerns Mina has is that EzyTax's pricing is not optimal. She has noticed that whilst the firm has been extremely busy with a record number of 9,000 small business returns last year, they have had relatively few individual returns (3,000). Yerry has also done some basic market research where she has found other tax agents charging individuals as little as $100 for a basic return. As a starting point, Mina decides to use an Activity Based Costing ("ABC") approach to help assess the cost of preparing each type of return. From the firm's timesheet and other records she produces the following information for the previous year: Activity Interview client $1,615,000 Obtain Missing data $800,000 Input data $390,000 Verify return with $875,000 client Cost Rectify errors after $40,000 ATO query Submit return $50,000 Other information: - On average each individual takes 20 minutes to interview and each business takes 2 hours. Last year a total of 19,000 hours were spent interviewing clients. Yerry Mina realised that follow-up conversations to obtain missing data relates to business returns only. Data input took a total of 9,750 hours, with it taking an average of 15 minutes for an individual and 1 hour for a business. Verification of the return with the client took an average of 10 minutes for individuals and 55 minutes for small businesses. There were 1,065 returns requiring rectification and only 22 of these were for individuals. Mina calculated that submission time was approximately the same across all returns. Required: 1. Use ABC to estimate the cost of an individual and a business return. Make clear any assumptions you have made. (10 Marks) 2. How might these estimates help explain the poor profitability experienced last year and what implications do they have for the firms' pricing policy? (5 Marks) 3. Yerry Mina uses the ABC approach based on the above data as a 'starting point. Can you suggest any other ways of altering the firms's costing and pricing policies which will also be beneficial to EzyTax? (5 Marks) Ezy Tax is a tax accounting firm offering an income tax preparation service for small businesses and individuals. The firm charges individuals $149 per return and small businesses are charged $399. Individual returns are normally relatively straightforward to process and the firm uses the ATO's free etax software to prepare and submit the returns. The individual returns do not tend to vary much in the workload required to complete them. The processing of small business tax returns is more complex and requires a specific software package that EzyTax has purchased for an annual licence fee of $25,000 plus $2.50 for each return processed. Processing of business returns varies as to the workload each one requires. The owner-manger of the firm, Jordan Pickford, is concerned that last year only a small profit was made despite the volume of work being higher than ever. She commented: "We are good tax accountants for our clients but we don't seem to be keeping our own house in order!" To help improve the situation Pickford decided to recruit a dedicated management accountant with a proven track record, Yerry Mina. On her first day in the job, Pickford tells Mina "I want you to get to the bottom of our recent poor profitability but I do not want you to buy in expensive 'solutions' which may quickly become out of date and are still prone to error. Also any new systems must be understandable to staff and in some instances clients, whom we must justify our price to." One of the first concerns Mina has is that EzyTax's pricing is not optimal. She has noticed that whilst the firm has been extremely busy with a record number of 9,000 small business returns last year, they have had relatively few individual returns (3,000). Yerry has also done some basic market research where she has found other tax agents charging individuals as little as $100 for a basic return. As a starting point, Mina decides to use an Activity Based Costing ("ABC") approach to help assess the cost of preparing each type of return. From the firm's timesheet and other records she produces the following information for the previous year: Activity Interview client $1,615,000 Obtain Missing data $800,000 Input data $390,000 Verify return with $875,000 client Cost Rectify errors after $40,000 ATO query Submit return $50,000 Other information: - On average each individual takes 20 minutes to interview and each business takes 2 hours. Last year a total of 19,000 hours were spent interviewing clients. Yerry Mina realised that follow-up conversations to obtain missing data relates to business returns only. Data input took a total of 9,750 hours, with it taking an average of 15 minutes for an individual and 1 hour for a business. Verification of the return with the client took an average of 10 minutes for individuals and 55 minutes for small businesses. There were 1,065 returns requiring rectification and only 22 of these were for individuals. Mina calculated that submission time was approximately the same across all returns. Required: 1. Use ABC to estimate the cost of an individual and a business return. Make clear any assumptions you have made. (10 Marks) 2. How might these estimates help explain the poor profitability experienced last year and what implications do they have for the firms' pricing policy? (5 Marks) 3. Yerry Mina uses the ABC approach based on the above data as a 'starting point. Can you suggest any other ways of altering the firms's costing and pricing policies which will also be beneficial to EzyTax? (5 Marks)
Expert Answer:
Related Book For
Matching Supply with Demand An Introduction to Operations Management
ISBN: 978-0073525204
3rd edition
Authors: Gerard Cachon, Christian Terwiesch
Posted Date:
Students also viewed these accounting questions
-
The Crazy Eddie fraud may appear smaller and gentler than the massive billion-dollar frauds exposed in recent times, such as Bernie Madoffs Ponzi scheme, frauds in the subprime mortgage market, the...
-
Planning is one of the most important management functions in any business. A front office managers first step in planning should involve determine the departments goals. Planning also includes...
-
Determine which of the fundamental laws of algebra is demonstrated. 8(3 2) = 8(3) 8(2)
-
Consider a TV set that consumes 120 W of electric power when it is on and is kept on for an average of 6 hours per day. For a unit electricity cost of 8 cents per kWh, determine the cost of...
-
Complete the following summary table. Hint: Remember the relationship between the different types of sums of squares and degrees of freedom (SStot = SSB + SSw and dftot = dfB + dfw). a) How many...
-
Based on the following pedigree for a trait determined by a single gene (affected individuals are shown as filled symbols), state whether it would be possible for the trait to be inherited in each of...
-
Go to the Webinars worksheet. DeShawn wants to determine the number of webinars the company can hold on Tuesdays and Thursdays to make the highest weekly profit without interfering with...
-
Water is supplied to a fountain via a large pipe. Somewhere along the flow path a troublesome teenager injects a soap solution at a rate of 3 . 2 4 g / s in an attempt to create a grand sudsy mess....
-
Janice Morgan, age 24, is single and has no dependents. She is a freelance writer. In January 2021, Janice opened her own office located at 2751 Waldham Road, Pleasant Hill, NM 88135. She called her...
-
Can you help me to write a research paper in strategic management: Topics :New technology help the organization to survive The following items should be included in the literature review:...
-
On what assumptions is the basic model of the optimal lot size based and to what extent are they problematic?
-
How are the characteristics of static calculations? And dynamic calculations?
-
What are the advantages and disadvantages of a low degree of centralization of procurement?
-
What is meant by cost lag?
-
What is the advantage of regression analysis compared to time-series analysis?
-
Activity Rates Patten Company uses activity-based costing (ABC). Patten manufactures toy cars using two activities: plastic injection molding and decal application. Patten's 20X1 total budgeted...
-
The population of Detroit, Michigan, decreased from 1,027,974 in 1990 to 688,701 in 2013 (Source: U.S. Census Bureau). Find the average rate of change in the population of Detroit, Michigan, over the...
-
CPG Bagels starts the day with a large production run of bagels. Through- out the morning, additional bagels are produced as needed. The last bake is completed at 3 P. M. and the store closes at 8 P....
-
Precision Testing (PTests) does fluid testing for several local hospitals. Consider their urine testing process. Each sample requires 12 seconds to test, but after 300 samples, the equipment must be...
-
Suppose a process contains two workstations that operate with no buffer between them. Now consider the three possible scenarios below: a. Which of the three scenarios will have, on average, the...
-
True or False: Annual worth analysis is the most popular DCF measure of economic worth.
-
Consider a palletizer at a bottling plant that has a first cost of \($150,000,\) operating and maintenance costs of \($17,500\) per year, and an estimated net salvage value of \($25,000\) at the end...
-
True or False: Unless non-monetary considerations dictate otherwise, choose the mutually exclusive investment alternative that has the greatest annual worth over the planning horizon.
Study smarter with the SolutionInn App