Assuming a FICA tax rate of 8% on the first $100,000 in wages, and a federal income tax rate of 20% on all wages, what would be an employee's net pay for the year if he earned $120,000 for the year?

howard, fine, & howard is an advertising agency. the firm uses an activity-based costing system to allocate overhead costs to its services. information about the firm's activity cost pool rates follows: stooge company was a client of howard, fine, & howard. recently, 7 administrative assistant hours, 3 new ad campaigns, and 8 meeting hours were incurred for the stooge company account. using the activity-based costing system, how much overhead cost would be allocated to the stooge company account?

Aproperty title search firm is contemplating using online software to increase its search productivity. currently an average of 40 minutes is needed to do a title search. the researcher cost is $2 per minute. clients are charged a fee of $400. company a's software would reduce the average search time by 10 minutes, at a cost of $3.50 per search. company b's software would reduce the average search time by 12 minutes at a cost of $3.60 per search. which option would have the higher productivity in terms of revenue per dollar of input?

Activity-based costing (abc) is not truly a cost collection mechanism as much as it is an inventory valuation method. the main purpose for implementing an activity-based cost system is to try to overcome some of the cost distortions that occur in traditional costing from product differences when there are variations in size and complexity. however, one of the disadvantages of utilizing abc is that the additional information gathering necessary to implement costing with that level of detail might be beyond the reach of some companies with resource or financial constraints. with this in mind, what kinds of industries or companies do you think would benefit most from using activity-based costing and why? in designing or modifying an accounting system to capture appropriate costs for abc, what considerations do you think would need to be made?