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It’s been my tradition to open the results email as soon as possible and aren’t I always glad to. Passed with 63%. Could have been worse, I guess.
That is all exams passed.
Boy, oh boy has it been a long road. Been cracking at it for 7 years now since starting as an undergraduate.
Commiserations to all who missed out. I recommend reading the feedback thread from the September exams to all sitting in the future. Some interesting discussions were had.
@ysolanki said:
Fail with 49. Is an admin review worth the money?The general feedback from those who use is no. ACCA already do lots of checks to ensure the result is correct. All the admin review does is recalculate your mark totals, you don’t actually get remarked.
Yes my one regret from the exam is mentioning operating segments as my first risk and then re-reading the requirement to realize I just wasted about one minute or so. Anyways I still got at least 8 other risks down and explained as best I could. Wrote the accounting treatment, wrote the risk of what could be over or understated, wrote why it might have been misstated (possible mgmt. bias and profit manipulation for example) and moved on.
It’s an exam, we’re human, and nobody scores 100% so we have all made mistakes on our paper one way or another.
Thanks a million to raoul for the input.
Really good advice on taking this exam.
I highly recommend people sitting the paper in December have a read of some of the debate that has gone on in this thread. It should make it much clearer (hopefully) what needs to be done to get that magic 50.
You are most welcome Alaya.
However, my notion that people don’t prepare right for this exam is not an opinion, it has become a fact. Read all the examiners reports on the website. She says it is every single one. People don’t prepare enough for this exam.
If they did, the time would be more than manageable.
In fact to anyone reading this sitting it in December I would highly recommend to read at least the three or four most recent reports from the examiner. She doesn’t write what she writes, or gives the advice she gives, for the fun of it.
@jwhyte said:
Rogman 288….If you really know audit like you are portraying, you would know that sufficient planning time is critical to good quality audit. It would be a quality control issue for a partner to accept an engagement with such tight deadline where they would not be able to obtain sufficient and appropriate evidence to support their opinion. This exam did not give sufficient time for us not even to think about what we already know. We spent time putting the whole syllabus in our head, we need time to retrieve the relevant information for the exam. Even Microsoft excel freeze with overload.I absolutely agree planning is crucial in audits. And it is in this exam, too. Like I said previously you need to go in with a game plan. But not just that, you need to go in with plenty of practice of that game plan already under your belt.
I sat four mocks before the exam all under exam conditions. 3 from the BBP kit and another from my college. When I was doing that exam, it was virtually like sitting it a fifth time. And I sucked hard my first two mock attempts believe me.
Like raoul hinted, once you have plenty of practice under your belt you know exactly how to go about answering the question requirements before reading a thing. Then it’s all about highlighting and plucking as many points as possible from the scenario presented and explaining them well.
I am not going to be arrogant and pretend I know it all, I don’t, and it is not in my nature. I could even still get less than 50 come October if I am unlucky.
However, if I am reassured of one thing before then it is that I have done what many students on here failed to do. Writing as many points as I wanted for each part of each and every question. I planned how I could achieve this, practised it at home, then did it on the day.
It is not just audit you have to do this in but all the papers. It is just more important than most. But my plan, practice, and follow said practised plan on the exam day has worked for every paper so far. I have scored 84 in P3, 65 in P2, 69 in P1 and 51 in advanced Taxation. And practising your technique to get knowledge onto your answer paper as best as possible was very important to score well for all those exams, too.
With all due respect to those complaining about the time, you just didn’t prepare enough to be able to manage it.
With all due respect alaya I think you are missing the point.
All those things you mentioned are being adequately examined. But so is your ability to think and come up with solutions fast as well. If you really, really know them well and to a high standard, pulling out at least half enough information from Q1 to score 50% in the 90 minutes allocated to it should really not be a problem for you. When you know stuff as well as you are expected for this exam it should be second nature for you.
I totally disagree that knowledge should be the end all of this paper and technique shouldn’t play a key role. Sure 80% of the syllabus is coverd in other exams!!
We’re supposed to have strong brought forward knowledge for this exam more than any other. Including all the IFRS standards in P2. Standard are crucial in AAA. But there are absolute no new ones to learn in AAA that you shouldn’t already be very familiar with from P2! That is only a hint at how the majority of knowledge should already be in your head before studying AAA if you are serious about learning and being an educated accountant.
There are only a few new ‘AAA exclusive’ topics such as Money Laundering and Auditor Liability, but even they aren’t commonly examined. All the commonly examined stuff stems from stuff you should already have a good knowledge of from previous papers.
And in the real world, technique is crucial in audit as well. There is a lot of work in auditing now days to do an acceptable, high quality audit. Having the skills to perform a time efficient audit that is worth the time and money, while not sacrificing any of the quality that you absolutely need to provide, is arguably the biggest challenge audit firms face and with so much competition for fees it only gets harder.
So how appropriate then that in the biggest and final Audit exam before you qualify, your ability to manage your time efficiently while not sacrificing the quality of your answers should be one of the biggest challenges in the exam.
Welcome to the real world, folks.
@raoul7370
A lot of what you are saying goes back to what my lecturer was saying. You don’t need a text book for this exam, knowing a little about a lot and being able to apply it well using good technique is key.
My lecturer preached the same thing, technique is crucial.
I personally have ZERO complains at the length of the paper having sat it yesterday.
I came in with a plan for doing the questions inside the allocation I had for them. 1 hour 30 to answer Q1 and 45 a piece for the others which included extra reading time too.
I have no complains about time pressure. If I do get less than 50 on October 15 it is because I didn’t know enough SIMPLE. I wrote down enough points to more than pass in the time I gave myself to do the questions and I answered every part of every question.
I am going to join the controversial side of such a debate and say yes I agree those complaining about time really didn’t do enough to practice their time management and plan for how much time to spend on each part to each question. They could more than likely do with practicing more mock exams and questions under exam conditions in general to perfect their ability to draw out enough points in the timeframe given.
It is more than possible. I am one piece of proof of that to come from yesterday’s exam. Is it easy? Of course not! It is not meant to be or everyone would pass. But that is why you need a good strong game plan and plenty of practice of said game plan before going into the hall.
@jmmyjimmy said:
Regarding case 2, I have put pervasive as the misstatement represents 50% of pbt. Do you think it is a mistake?I would say no. Did you give the fact that it effect Assets, expenses and disclosures as another justification for saying it was pervasive? So more than one FS item for example. I think we’re okay as long as we did give a solid argument. And it was adverse of course because it would be down to a disagreement.
Them not wanting to recognize a major, major court action worth 1.2 million against the company by canceling out the liability and pretending it never happened sounds very pervasive alone.
I spent 20 minutes reading Q1 and highlighting as much as possible as I was reading. Then gave myself 1.5 minutes per mark to lift what I highlighted into answer form for each question.
Spent an hour and a half on it.
Question 1 was a bit evil. So much flicking back and forth between pages!
I answered every part to every question and stuck to my game plan, did not overrun anything, applied the best technique I could. Used the words ‘to verify’ a lot and the word because a fair bit to help remind myself to explain every point as much as possible.
Q2 I got Qualified ‘except for’ for opinion on the leases, adverse opinion on the claim because it was more than half of profit and affected more than one FS item (Assets, expenses and disclosers). Then the impairment was immaterial but I mentioned ISA 450 were you have to weight up the total misstatements except for trivial items.
Q3 I had fun plucking up loads of thing on part B’s scenario. The lack of qualification for the supervisor, the fact a cash settled scheme was treated as an equity one and the journal to reverse it, the poor planning to only arrange a meeting with the sick audit manager at the last minute, the fact that checking a expert website is not enough to be reassured of their competence, the fact the supervisor could use a lot more training and so on.
Q3 Part A was okay and similar enough to previous PFI questions.
Hoping I done enough to pass now. We shall see.
It may not be the end of the world, though it will make the life of your corrector that little bit harder at the very least, which probably won’t help them get on your side.
Googling every ISA brings up a fair bit of information on them to take your own summary notes on.
It is their content that matters most of course. Know what they require, don’t stress over the numbers.
See the summary on changes.
So basically no changes to what you need to know.
@samh88 said:
I’m glad I’m not the only one who was annoyed by the kids outside, it was really distracting. Also the room I was in the desks were facing a massive window with sun beaming in.I noticed that about question 2 aswell so hopefully picked up some marks there, although I put deliberate behaviour for most of them because it seemed like clear tax avoidance.
I made a complete tits of the exam though so I’ll be resitting in December. Which is another annoying point, it’s not really fair that the Irish paper can only be sat twice a year!
Yeah absolutely ridiculous they thought it be a good idea to give screaming young kids a tour of the place when there is major exams going on. It definitely made it harder to concentrate when there is kids around screaming and laughing. What a joke. Thousands having to que up for the elevators (the one which actually were functioning!) because all other exits were blocked off was also embarrassing.
I put deliberate behavior for most as well because there was quite a lot of tax evasion going on in that question. The undeclared sales, staff bonus paid in cash left undeclared, and private motor expenses been put through the books, etc.
You probably did better than you expect. If you attempted everything then there is hope.
I believe the two sittings a year for our paper is due to a lack of resources. If I am not mistaken ACCA outsource our exam to the Irish Tax Institute and they write the paper, mark the scrips, etc. But I heard it’s only practical for them and ACCA to arrange it twice a year.
PS: Retirement Relief for the shares in Q1 with a 3,000,000 limit (less any used up) is because she was disposing to a Favorite Niece and Favorite Nieces are treated as a child for tax.
@paulcostelloe1000 said:
Hi all,I sat the Irish variant too, however, I can’t seem to remember the questions very well.
Do you remember in Q1 the various transfers Lorraine was making i.e the business premises and apartment, would the transfer not have been tax free as they were between spouses ?
Then to follow on, the better option was two because if Charlie occupied the apartment for three years after the transfer he could sell it on then availing of PPR. Lorraine in turn could sell the business premises and avail of RR because it wasn’t practical for her to transfer the business premises to Charlie because he was only 36 and would have to wait 20 years for the relief.
What are your thoughts on this ? This requirement sent me all over the place, I couldn’t iron out was going on, I needed more time to think the scenario through.
Then the last 18 marks confused me too. Lorraine was able to utilise her remaining RR of 2,850,000, the value of the company was no where near that value so RR fully covered the liability.
Her favourite niece had 30k left as a class 1 threshold after using 280k from a gift from her mother and she availed for Business relief and there was no CAT liability.
Something must have went tits up with that question for me ?. I think I could have thrown it away on Q1. I didn’t remain composed.
I found it time pressured being honest. Time management is hard.
Thanks mate
I agree that Q1 was by far the hardest on the paper. And yes difficult to find the time to read it enough times to see if you missed any tricks. But it’s always the longest question hence why I done it last.
I actually started with Part 3 as I knew I would be less able to do part 2.
I did mention spousal exemption alright. But I also said that I assume Lorraine and Charlie will be living together (because otherwise it won’t be exempt from CGT if they don’t live together as husband and wife). I can’t remember anything in the question to say whether they lived together as husband and wife. As for the business premises I noted Loraine owned it personally. The point on PPR could be a good one for future use.
I was better at the 18 marker. The niece was a favorite niece so I did give her the group threshold 1 and I gave her business relief too because she’ll own 25% of the shares after the gift. I did also work out that the CGT was covered the remaining retirement Relief because a disposal to a child is limited to 3m when over 66 and it is a lifetime limit.
I also gave Loraine Entrepreneur Relief and used 10% CGT rate as a result.
After adding back the investments which aren’t allow for business relief and adding stamp duty I think I was left with a small but insignificant CAT liability for the niece.
I wouldn’t worry about it because sounds like you were indeed on the right track. If you also gave the rest of the exam a good stab you should be indeed safe.
I sat the Irish variant.
It was hard as any high level tax exam is bound to be but if you knew your stuff and practiced enough past paper questions to learn then it become an okay exam.
I think it is a fair examiner. The exam is time pressured but still more than doable in the 195 minutes.
I highly recommend Julie from accountancy school if anyone is looking for tuition for the Irish variant. Her lectures and advice are brilliant.
Q2 was very, very similar in parts to a question asked in 2012 on revenue audits. If you practiced that one then you knew at least 3 of the 7 issues well enough to score full marks for this question I reckon. There were minor twist like I think the staff in issue 4 IIRC were low paid this time where they were high paid on 2012 so you used the lower tax rate. But that is all.
Some issues with the exam hall which I will leave for the ACCA feedback forum. We could hear girls on a school tour giggling at times during the exam making a lot of noise and then all the exits except the lift were closed off when leaving the exam. A normally excellent venue was disappointing this time.
Overall I gave it my best and have no regrets. Answered all parts, nothing scared me too much, etc. And the difficulty of the exam vs time was well balanced.
Passed with 64%.
Relieved and very happy.
The key was to not panic in the exam and relax.
Whatever you put your mind to is possible, you could pass 3 in December if you wanted.
However just because you’d like to pass multiple in one sitting won’t make the hard work involved for passing each subject any easier. You still have to want to work very hard too. Lots of people take the professional levels especially one at a time because studying two is too demanding for them.
I myself am taking the P levels one at a time at the moment. The syllabus for them are large and not something that is easily learnt in just a few weeks. To be confident with them you really do need to study them over 8-12 weeks.
I might have been blind and not spotted something but did anyone see the value of the dividend paid by Mirror in Q1? What did I fail to spot/do?
Very surprised there was no SOCE that was the first thing I looked for when I saw dividends but there was none.
FWIW I did take some shot of it. I know dividends are paid from retained earning so done a retained earnings working and dividends paid was my balancing figure ha! Probably an epic fail but ah well hopefully I got enough to scrape a pass in the cash flow.
Regarding the lease exemption the examiner’s article says:
3.4 A simplified approach for short-term or low-value leases
A short-term lease is a lease that, at the date of commencement, has a term of 12 months or less. A lease that contains a purchase option cannot be a short-term lease. Lessees can elect to treat short-term leases by recognising the lease rentals as an expense over the lease term rather than recognising a ‘right of use asset’ and a lease liability. The election needs to be made for relevant leased assets on a ‘class-by-class’ basis. A similar election – on a lease-by-lease basis – can be made in respect of ‘low value assets’.The assessment of whether an underlying asset is of low value is performed on an absolute basis. Leases of low-value assets qualify for the simplified accounting treatment explained above regardless of whether those leases are material to the lessee. The assessment is not affected by the size, nature or circumstances of the lessee. Accordingly, different lessees are expected to reach the same conclusions about whether a particular underlying asset is of low value.
@tayyabom said:
oh Ok, I remember now. Thanks.There were two issues here:
1) Capitalization of research costs, they had just got permission from regulatory authority to test/prototype the turbines and they had a dead end with some development. Commercial production had not been started yet.
I mentioned the criteria of IAS 38, and mentioned something that since the testing under harsh conditions is not completed yet and they have doubts about the commercial production they shouldn’t capitalize the testing expenses.
2) They were supplying the energy back to govt and this part was about recognition of revenue, the question was whether to recognize it?
I mentioned that, if a contract exists as per IFRS 15 and company expects receipt of payment then they should recognize the revenue immediately at the time of delivery. Because when energy is transmitted to the national grid, risks and rewards are immediately transferred.
Yeah what you said makes sense, too. I personalty judged it as IFRS 13 and talked about the highest and best use and it being legally permissible, financially feasible, etc. Who knows. We both gave it our best judgement and attempt anyway that’s all we can do. Here’s hoping we both pass that and every other part of the exam we attempted anyway.
I also said to recognize the sale as revenue and any remaining energy left at the year end to treat as inventory.
@tayyabom said:
You are making me scared now, Q3 (C) was IFRS 13? I don’t remember attempting IFRS 13 at all during the whole exam, can you provide little more detail about this? I’m too nervous now, it was 7 marks I believe.Ha! Don’t worry. Even if you attempted and said anything reasonable you may still score a mark or two. I wouldn’t stress over it.
However IFRS 13 does mention the measurement of non-finanicial assets and the examples given in my Kaplan book were Land and Research and Development projects. That’s why that stood out to me in the question as they bought land and were using it to test their project of developing more energy efficient wind turbines. There was other issues to score marks on other than it, such as the sale of renewable energy, or even if you mention that any development cost for developing their new prototype can be capitalized as part the cost of the wind turbine asset if/when completed that could even be valid point possibly.
Or who knows maybe I am completely off trail altogether and misjudged the question.
@olliebalboa said:
I notice some people saying that the bicycles qualified for an exemption under IFRS 16 and should be expensed to the P/L as they are of low value? Low value is $5k or less from most readings I have found…My logic was 100 bicycles at $600 each = $60,000 and this would qualify as a lease if the 12 month lease period was extended
Did anyone else come to the same conclusion?
I hope I haven’t thrown marks away :/
Having read the technical article the examiner uploaded on the 2nd of August about IFRS 16 I am confident I judged the bikes correctly given their term was 12 months or less and they are typically a low value item like tablets and telephones would be. The fact they were unlikely to extend the lease term was important.
Don’t stress over it though you only lost 3 marks max if you got that part wrong I bet. Plenty of other areas you could have made up for it.
@ muhammad Well done you gave everything your best attempt and didn’t give up any part of the questions. I think because we gave everything our best and didn’t panic or give up we’ve a 50/50 chance of passing.
Q3 (C) was IFRS 13 fair value measurement and more specifically the part of the standard that talks about land and research and development projects. That was my take. A difficult enough question as was the part B of Q3.
I thought the car leases was very tricky in part b of Q4 but the bikes were easy if you came across the exemption for leases under IFRS 16. The fact you still attempted it is important as if you leave any parts blank you lose the professional marks. So not attempting it would not just sacrifice 7 marks but possibly 9.
It was a difficult exam but let’s hope for the best in October.