Logistics solutions provides order fulfillment services for dot merchants. the company maintains warehouses that stock items carried by its dot clients. when a client receives an order from a customer, the order is forwarded to logistics solutions, which pulls the item from storage, packs it, and ships it to the customer. the company uses a predetermined variable overhead rate based on direct labor-hours. in the most recent month, 120,000 items were shipped to customers using 2,300 direct labor-hours. the company incurred a total of $7,360 in variable overhead costs. according to the company’s standards, 0.02 direct labor-hours are required to fulfill an order for one item and the variable overhead rate is $3.25 per direct labor-hour.

required: according to the standards, what variable overhead cost should have been incurred to fill the orders for the 120,000 items? how much does this differ from the actual variable overhead cost? break down the difference computed in (1) above into a variable overhead rate variance and a variable overhead efficiency variance.

2. taxes paid for a given income level rosa is getting ready to do her taxes. she is single and lives in denver. rosa earned $60,000 in taxable income in 2015. she reviews the following table, which shows the irs tax rates for a single taxpayer in 2015. on annual taxable the tax rate (percent) up to $9,225 10.0 from $9,225 to $37,450 15.0 from $37,450 to $90,750 25.0 from $90,750 to $189,300 28.0 from $189,300 to $411,500 33.0 from $411,500 to $413,200 35.0 over $413,200 39.6 based on the irs table, rosa calculates that her marginal tax rate is when her annual taxable income is $60,000. rosa calculates that she owes in income taxes for 2015. rosa then calculates that her average tax rate is , based on the annual income level and the amount of taxes she owes for 2015. after figuring out what she owes in taxes in 2015, rosa decides to ask an accountant for tax advice. the accountant claims that he has found a legal way to shelter $4,000 of taxable income from the federal government. the maximum amount that rosa is willing to pay to learn this strategy and reduce her taxable income by $4,000 is . (hint: sheltering some income means finding a legal way to avoid being charged income tax on that income. for example, someone who has $50,000 in taxable income and shelters $10,000 pays income tax on only $40,000.)