The consolidated tax liability for most affiliated groups is assigned among the parent and its subsidiaries-each entity is responsible for "its share" of the tax. The Regulations allow several methods to be used to compute these allocations.

In this context, define the two most commonly encountered tax-sharing methods used by Federal consolidated tax return groups. When would a subsidiary corporation prefer one method over another?

a. The relative taxable income method.

b. The relative tax liability method.