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I recently met Chelsea Andersen to celebrate her completing all her ACCA exams. I wanted her to feel special so was determined to mark this achievement. Chelsea had to deal with mobility issues when she was growing up so resolved to make herself stronger. When you...

HMRC Authorised Mileage Scheme (AMS) is a popular area in all the tax exams. It applies to employees who use their own cars for business travel and are then reimbursed by their employer. The rates are 45p per mile for the first 10,000 business miles and just 25p a...

In life, our perceptions of the challenges we face are far worse than the reality. When you talk to successful people, they will tell you that things were not that bad. Assia decided to do SBR and ATX at the same sitting in 3 months. Lots of people will tell you that...

Termination payments are a popular topic in the ACCA Advanced Tax, ICAEW BPT, ATT, and CTA exams. It is dealt with in s401-406 ITEPA 2003. There are 3 types of termination payments 1.    Fully Taxable -payments for services past, present, and...

Why Should You Use Neil Da Costa’s Tax Exam Podcasts? It is available on Spotify, Apple, and Google podcasts Each episode is under 15 minutes in length. It has been used by hundreds of tax students in more than 30 countries. It focuses on the most likely areas to be...

One popular area in Advanced Tax and BPT is controlled foreign companies (CFCs). CFCs have been examined in the last 4 consecutive Advanced Tax exams. You need to learn 3 things about CFCs ·       Definition Of A CFC A CFC is an...

What came up in today’s Advanced Tax exam? According to my students was quite a challenging exam with a lot of CGT and IHT! While a lot of areas I expected to feature came up, it was surprising to see that there were no share schemes, personal service companies or...

At the strategic level of the professional ACCA exams , examiners want students to demonstrate evaluation skills and offer recommedations. You need to express your opinion based on the information given in the scenario and show your technical knowledge. The questions...

One area I expect will feature in next week’s Advanced Tax exam is overseas aspects for individuals. You need to learn the automatic residency statutory tests Automatically non-resident if in the UK for less than 16 days (leavers), less than 46 days (arrivers) or less...

One area that is due to come up in next week’s BPT and Advanced Tax exams is a death estate Typically, inheritance tax questions tend to be either lifetime gifts where you need to deal with the IHT and CGT implications and the death estate. You need to put all assets...