4 (a) For this part, assume today’s date is 1 March 2006.

Bill and Ben each own 50% of the ordinary share capital in Flower Limited, an unquoted UK trading company

that makes electronic toys. Flower Limited was incorporated on 1 August 2005 with 1,000 ￡1 ordinary shares,

and commenced trading on the same day. The business has been successful, and the company has accumulated

a large cash balance of ￡180,000, which is to be used to purchase a new factory. However, Bill and Ben have

received an offer from a rival company, which they are considering. The offer provides Bill and Ben with two

alternative methods of payment for the purchase of their shares:

(i) ￡480,000 for the company, inclusive of the ￡180,000 cash balance.

(ii) ￡300,000 for the company assuming the cash available for the factory purchase is extracted prior to sale.

Bill and Ben each currently receive a gross salary of ￡3,750 per month from Flower Limited. Part of the offer

terms is that Bill and Ben would be retained as employees of the company on the same salary.

Neither Bill nor Ben has used any of their capital gains tax annual exemption for the tax year 2005/06.

Required:

(i) Calculate which of the following means of extracting the ￡180,000 from Flower Limited on 31 March

2006 will result in the highest after tax cash amount for Bill and Ben:

(1) payment of a dividend, or

(2) payment of a salary bonus.

You are not required to consider the corporation tax (CT) implications for Flower Limited in your

answer. (5 marks)

(ii) the factors that should be considered in the design of a reward scheme for BGL; (7 marks)

(ii) authority; (3 marks)

2 Your firm was appointed as auditor to Indigo Co, an iron and steel corporation, in September 2005. You are the

manager in charge of the audit of the financial statements of Indigo, for the year ending 31 December 2005.

Indigo owns office buildings, a workshop and a substantial stockyard on land that was leased in 1995 for 25 years.

Day-to-day operations are managed by the chief accountant, purchasing manager and workshop supervisor who

report to the managing director.

All iron, steel and other metals are purchased for cash at ‘scrap’ prices determined by the purchasing manager. Scrap

metal is mostly high volume. A weighbridge at the entrance to the stockyard weighs trucks and vans before and after

the scrap metals that they carry are unloaded into the stockyard.

Two furnaces in the workshop melt down the salvageable scrap metal into blocks the size of small bricks that are then

stored in the workshop. These are sold on both credit and cash terms. The furnaces are now 10 years old and have

an estimated useful life of a further 15 years. However, the furnace linings are replaced every four years. An annual

provision is made for 25% of the estimated cost of the next relining. A by-product of the operation of the furnaces is

the production of ‘clinker’. Most of this is sold, for cash, for road surfacing but some is illegally dumped.

Indigo’s operations are subsidised by the local authority as their existence encourages recycling and means that there

is less dumping of metal items. Indigo receives a subsidy calculated at 15% of the market value of metals purchased,

as declared in a quarterly return. The return for the quarter to 31 December 2005 is due to be submitted on

21 January 2006.

Indigo maintains manual inventory records by metal and estimated quality. Indigo counted inventory at 30 November

2005 with the intention of ‘rolling-forward’ the purchasing manager’s valuation as at that date to the year-end

quantities per the manual records. However, you were not aware of this until you visited Indigo yesterday to plan

your year-end procedures.

During yesterday’s tour of Indigo’s premises you saw that:

(i) sheets of aluminium were strewn across fields adjacent to the stockyard after a storm blew them away;

(ii) much of the vast quantity of iron piled up in the stockyard is rusty;

(iii) piles of copper and brass, that can be distinguished with a simple acid test, have been mixed up.

The count sheets show that metal quantities have increased, on average, by a third since last year; the quantity of

aluminium, however, is shown to be three times more. There is no suitably qualified metallurgical expert to value

inventory in the region in which Indigo operates.

The chief accountant disappeared on 1 December, taking the cash book and cash from three days’ sales with him.

The cash book was last posted to the general ledger as at 31 October 2005. The managing director has made an

allegation of fraud against the chief accountant to the police.

The auditor’s report on the financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2004 was unmodified.

Required:

(a) Describe the principal audit procedures to be carried out on the opening balances of the financial statements

of Indigo Co for the year ending 31 December 2005. (6 marks)

(ii) The recoverability of the deferred tax asset. (4 marks)