*** ACCA P6 December 2016 Exam was.. Instant Poll and comments ***

Is it normal that I know the P6 major rules like 80% of it and the exams was like a disaster. The questions set are absolutely different.

I think I either did really well or really bad! I found that paper ok, but I fear I did everything wrong!

Paper was fair I think. I ran out of time and left 14 marks unanswered on Q4 but I feel I should have answered the other questions well enough to pass.

Q5 was a complete gift for me since I just read about share option plans the night before 🙂

Question one was bad for me, I’ve never been very comfortable with incorporation and I literally knew nothing about R&D tax reliefs. Did anyone else get £18k dividends? I couldn’t decide if the taxable profits included his salary or not so I just left it off???

Question two was OK, bit of a surprise to see a big IHT/CGT question, I was expecting groups! I hate when the examiner says don’t tell me about the 7 years etc – dam! take away the easy marks! lol! So benefits I said were AE, gift value is frozen and the NRB is used against lifetime gifts first???

I went for Q3 which was tricky in places and I didn’t really know the group arrangements, think I went down the path for instalments, which of course is wrong, felt like I was making that bit up! Think I said the profits for the foreign company needed to be £117k with losses used of £63kish if they were going to maximise DTR.

Q4 wasn’t too bad, but I got caught out by the dates to start with, year end on the 30th April and him leaving the P’ship on the 31st Dec means you had to time apportion everything!

On Q4 part c, I didn’t understand why you had to do tax year 17/18, as we only had profits to 30/04/2017 – so I just used that figure??

I had about £18k in dividends for Q1.
And about £63 ish to relieve DTR in Q3 sounds about right.
Q3 and Q5 were a gift for me too.
Q1 was really finnickity, and I fear a bit of a disaster but luckily I’d memorised the Incorporation relief stuff.
Overall could have been so much worse. I think it was a fair exam.
My last one (hopefully) so I was in tears at the end (of relief).
Good luck to everyone who sat this one!

Also how did people deal with accommodation benefit?

Seemed too straight forward, applying the Mv – 75k x 3% value method + annual then just the annual and rent on the other option.

Both deductible and both needed nic @ 13.8%, after tax benefit before taking into account option of disposing the house lay with option 1????

Hi

In Q1 did anyone else add the R & D of £12,000 back onto the £55,000 to leave £67k TTP?? I based my calc on £67k per year for 2017/18, 2018/19, 2019/20, probably way off the mark. Felt the exam was worded poorly in places and v time pressured!!

Q1 was too lengthy but simple, I think there was a lot to do, probably was far simpler then we might think but the sentences used and as normal ACCA lack of writing poorly questions, mislead students.

I mean it said what is his post income tax if he is incorporated rather than sole trader. I only now realised we were meant to use the 55000 x3 years trading profit to calculate his tax as sole trader. if he was incorporated then we deduct salary from 55,000 x 3years. The rest would be dividends and company pays corporation tax. salary has employer and employee class 1 NIC contributions but dividend has no NIC implications.
But makes it more complicated by saying he doesn’t want to be in higher rate band as he is already taxed at 40%. The question tries to make it too tricky and confuses students because of incorrect wording and not asking clearly what he wants.

I think the paper was fair but was really time pressured. I could have done with an extra 30 mins. Q1 was easy but far too lengthy. The question did say to ignore the R&D expenditure in part 1a. I used 55000 as the adjusted profit for both the company and sole trader. I then deducted the salary and employers ni (less ni allowance) from the company profit and calculated 20% tax on this, the after tax profit would be dividend distributions to Duncan which i grossed up. Not sure if this is correct, but I had to restrict some of the dividend so that he would remain in the basic rate band. Spent far too much time on this question that I had to rush through the other questions.

Did anyone make any adjustments to the building in Q4 under the capital good scheme? Just hoping that I have done enough to scrape a pass.

what can I say? A fair paper but I needed to practice a lot more past papers. Sigh.

Q1 was so confusing I would like to complain! I couldn’t decide what income shall I calculate trading or employment? Wording very confusing!!! I did loads of past exam question and no one was that badly worded!

Q1 was terrible! Spent too much time on deciding what profit to take into account. I have never come across of such bad worded question!!!