Problem
In recent years, the SEC has placed more emphasis on the review of companies' determination of their valuation allowances. To better understand this topic, answer the following questions. Providing computational examples will be particularly helpful to make your explanation of these concepts more concrete.
1) What is a deferred tax asset, and what is a deferred tax liability?
2) Why do deferred tax assets and liabilities exist, and how are they computed?
3) Why do companies have a valuation allowance account? Be sure to explain how the valuation allowance account is related to other account(s).
4) Identify areas of concern expressed by the SEC with respect to companies' computation of their valuation allowance, and explain why the SEC is concerned about the computation of the valuation allowance.
5) Provide and discuss examples of disclosures about the valuation allowance account from the financial statements (issued within the past 24 months) of at least two real companies. The information from the face of the financial statements should be correlated with the corresponding information in the footnotes.