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I recently met up with Ayashna to celebrate her completing the ACCA exams and becoming fully qualified. When Ayashna did Advanced Tax, I guided her through the large syllabus by recommending that she focuses on learning the key topics and practice exam questions. By...

HMRC encourage wealthy taxpayers to invest in small unquoted trading companies by offering generous tax benefits to business angels who are willing to risk their hard cash in exchange for shares. The small enterprise investment scheme is geared to small companies with...

Many middle-class parents have seen the capital value of their main residence appreciate sharply over the years leading to a potential inheritance tax liability on death. As a result, to remove the main residence from their death estate, they may choose to make a...

A popular area in both the ACCA ATX and ACA BPT exams is the IHT and CGT implications of a gift of property during an individual’s lifetime. A gift to an individual has both IHT and CGT implications. For IHT , it is called a potentially exempt transfer (PET) and...

An area due to come up in the March 2023 Advanced Tax is incorporation relief.  As an unincorporated sole trader business grows, the small business owner may decide to transfer the business to a limited company in order to make finance more accessible or to...

One popular area in the ATX and BPT exams is the availability of the remittance election which can only be made by individuals who are non-UK domiciled that are UK resident. This means that if you are UK-domiciled, the remittance election is not available!If the...

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 can be downloaded and used while...

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...

When I met Mufaddel, he explained to me that he desperately needed to pass Advanced Tax as he planned to join his father’s Chartered Accountancy Practice.Doing Advanced Tax was not easy, but I encouraged him when the going got tough and explained to him that as long...

One of my many bad habits is procrastination. When I have something boring to do or a large task, I simply put it off. By ignoring it, I can focus on doing the more enjoyable tasks that I love doing. Eventually this causes unnecessary pressure and I have to pay the...