(a) Companies shall apply interperiod tax allocation (tax normalization) to all book/tax temporary differences which would be considered material for published financial report purposes. Furthermore, companies shall also apply interperiod tax allocation if any item or group of similar items when aggregated would yield debit or credit entries which exceed or would exceed 5 percent of the gross deferred income tax expense debits or credits during any calendar year over the life of the temporary difference. The tax effects of book/tax temporary differences shall be normalized and the deferrals shall be included in the following accounts:

In lieu of the accounting prescribed herein, any company shall treat the increase or reduction in current income taxes payable resulting from the use of flow through accounting in prior years as an increase or reduction in current tax expense.

(b) Supporting documentation shall be maintained so as to separately identify the amount of deferred taxes which arise from the use of an accelerated method of depreciation.

(c) Subsidiary records shall be used to reduce the deferred tax assets contained in the accounts specified in paragraph (a) of this section when it is likely that some portion or all of the deferred tax asset will not be realized. The amount recorded in the subsidiary record should be sufficient to reduce the deferred tax asset to the amount that is likely to be realized.

(d) The records supporting the activity in the deferred income tax accounts shall be maintained in sufficient detail to identify the nature of the specific temporary differences giving rise to both the debits and credits to the individual accounts.

(e) Any company that uses accelerated depreciation (or recognizes taxable income or losses upon the retirement of property) for income tax purposes shall normalize the tax differentials occasioned thereby as indicated in paragraphs (e)(1) and (e)(2) of this section.

(1) With respect to the retirement of property the book/tax difference between (i) the recognition of proceeds as income and the accrual for salvage value and (ii) the book and tax capital recovery, shall be normalized.

(2) Records shall be maintained so as to show the deferred tax amounts by vintage year separately for each class or subclass of eligible depreciable telephone plant for which an accelerated method of depreciation has been used for income tax purposes. When property is transferred to nonregulated activities, the associated deferred income taxes and unamortized investment tax credits shall also be identified and transferred to the appropriate nonregulated accounts.

(f) The tax differentials to be normalized as specified in this section shall also encompass the additional effect of state and local income tax changes on Federal income taxes produced by the provision for deferred state and local income taxes for book/tax temporary differences related to such income taxes.

(g) Companies that receive the tax benefits from the filing of a consolidated income tax return by the parent company, (pursuant to closing agreements with the Internal Revenue Service, effective January 1, 1966) representing the deferred income taxes from the elimination of intercompany profits for income tax purposes on sales of regulated equipment, may credit such deferred taxes directly to the plant account which contains such intercompany profit rather than crediting such deferred taxes to the applicable accounts in paragraph (a) of this section. If the deferred income taxes are recorded as a reduction of the appropriate plant accounts, such reduction shall be treated as reducing the original cost of the plant and accounted for as such.

[51 FR 43499, Dec. 2, 1986, as amended at 59 FR 9418, Feb. 28, 1994]