*** ACCA Paper ATX March 2019 Exam was.. Instant Poll and comments ***

Guys
How was ATX for you?

I found the exam was overall OK. I was disappointed by Q1. There was no much group loss relief. CT computations seemed to easy I doubt I unveiled the tricks. The timing of CT payments seemed the key point and I was not very strong on that I probably failed most of the marks on that part.

There were fairly many marks available for VAT. I could not ascertain if the VAT charged on legal advice oversea was to consider as a service to an individual or to a VAT registered business.

VAT group: only 2 companies in the group. Disadvantages: – dual liability for errors towards HMRC. – more admin to collate the info in one single return – no refund of input VAT if one company makes 0% rated supplies

NAte’s business: additional taxable profits due to errors
add back 15% of the lease of the car was: not allowable because the car CO2 emission exceeded 130g/km
– the capital allowance claimed on not qualifying assets added back in full

opening years rules to allocate the additional profits to the first two tax years and resulting 3 month overlap profits.

Application of tax band rates for IT and NIC class 4 computations

Ethical question pretty easy: I just omitted to talk about risks to principles of ethical code and safeguards and option to refuse to act as tax adviser but mentioned ID and proof of address – ATL – attitude towards disclosure of profits especially to HMRC – ethical principle of professional competence and technical competence and Integrity

IHT on sale of 13,000 shares had no AE allowance as both previously used
but there was diminishing value relief available as shares value on death was inferior to share price at the time of the price. The rest was straightforward computation of both NRB and residential NRB

Q4. part a. no difference on CGT implication on two disposal proposed from none of the parties.

I hardly remember the remaining questions. Finger crossed!

Nasty! And agreed extremely time pressured. Last exam fingers crossed!!

Q1 my IHT liability was £54,800, and overall available funds left for the expansion around £213k.

With the error corrections, the car was only allowed 8% capital allowances due to it’s CO2 emissions, the AIA claimed on the other amount was added back in full. So this gave me a total of £47,202 to be added back with £18880 of that being overlap profits for the first 3 months.

I advised Nate to sell the shares across current year and next year so that each disposal would be fully covered by the A.E.

In Q3, there was a subtle different for Freya making the sale of the painting, and Birta making it. For Freya, it didn’t matter – she got £34k regardless. But… Freya is a connected person to Birta, and as the painting was sold at a loss, this meant that the loss could only be relieved against any future gains from transactions with Freya. Whereas, if she had sold it to the unconnected person herself, that restriction wouldn’t’ve applied.

Can’t remember much else.

haha! dunno about that! Quite a few marks across the paper that I couldn’t answer.

struggled with Q2 14 mark part as i could find a way to relieve the loss and but IHT was ok dont know but i reinstated the husband’s NRB of 225,000 with respect to 325,000 with residence NRB of 100 plus 100 passed to direct descendants. Unfortunately its not going to be a pass for me this time. I completed the exam but i not expecting more than 35 in this. I wonder why so many important topics were missed like CSOP, Saye, EMI, SIP schemes then SEIS, EIS, VCT with No BPR, ER, Residency test etc which are regular feature of P6. This exam was barely touching the entire syllabus was more like a mathematical riddle to fail the candidates.

In Q1a, I kept wondering why is IHT payable on PET by the ‘son’ in question when whole of the estate was left to his father. Then I just made an assumption that he is a remainder man and did some calculation.

In Q2a, I even turned the page to see if some numbers were provided for the calculation. Kept reading between the lines to see what I was missing, cause it was for 14 marks I think, but invain. Could only find stuff for explanation than the required calculation. Ended up with random assumption and some calculation but could never justify the marks provided.

In Q3, I mentioned that if proceeds were given instead of the painting, cash will be exempt from cgt so no tax will be deducted on it. And If the painting was given, it will be given at market value 34k since it was being given to a connected person which was subsequently sold at a no gain no loss.

Forgot the rest of it already.