Becker ACCA Exam Tips December 2014

Paper F6
• Taxation of benefits and of motor cars.
• Combination of employment income & different types of property income, maybe rent-a- room or personal income tax computation.
• Employment income – benefits with NICs.
• Partnerships – opening and closing year issues.
• Relief for a trading loss of self- employed persons.
• A 12-month accounting period, with adjustments for profit.
• Long period of account rules.
• Capital gains in a group.
• Principal private residence.
• Entrepreneurs’ relief.
• VAT treatment of overseas trading (EU and non-EU sales and purchases). •Class1andClass1ANIC– benefits and PAYE.
• Unused nil rate bands from a predecessor spouse.

Paper F7
Common areas that feature on a regular basis in the exam are as follows:
• Construction contracts.
• Revenue recognition.
• Substance vs form.
• Convertible instruments (IAS 32/IFRS 9).
• Accounting for taxation, as part of final accounts question.
• Accounting for assets, particularly IAS 16.
• Provisions and contingencies.

Paper F9
Section A
• Read the examiner’s articles – Capital Asset Pricing Model. Take a look at recent Myopic management feature.
• Read other key articles – Business Valuation (February 2012), advanced investment appraisal (October 2010), foreign exchange risk and its management (July 2010).
Section B
• IRR.
• Debt factoring.
• Dividend policy.
• Bond valuation (including convertibles).

Paper P1
• Corporate governance (CG) concepts, underlying fundamentals and arrangements.
• CG in other organisations (e.g. public sector, NGOs).
• Types and forms of CG (e.g. rules based, principles based, insider, outsider systems, UK Corporate Governance Code, SoX).
• Agency theory, stakeholders, Mendelow.
• Board structures, CEO/chairman, directors, NEDs, committees.
• Internal control and business risk, Turnbull.
• Ethical theories and business codes – Kohlberg, Gray, Owen and Adams, Tucker, AAA.
• Professions and the public interest.
• Corporate social responsibility, corporate citizen, footprints and sustainability.
• Integrated reporting, social and environmental auditing.

Paper P2
• Consolidations in Q1.
• Disposals and complex groups (June 2010).
• Disposals (December 2009).
• Step acquisitions (December 2011).
• Cash flow (Dec 2013).
• Foreign sub (June 2010).
• Complex group (Dec 2012 and June 2013).
• Consolidated profit or loss was examined for the first time in over three years in the June 2014 paper. • Foreign subsidiaries have not been examined for a few exams.
• Financial instruments (IAS 39/IFRS 9) to include hedge accounting, questions on this topic tend to appear in most exams
• Employee benefits (IAS 19), this standard was amended by IASB in 2011 and is now examinable under the new standard.
• Standards: Leases (IAS 17), share-based payments (IFRS 2), impairment of assets (IAS 36), deferred tax (IAS 12).

Paper P3
• Strategic choice.
• Stakeholders.
• Organisational structure.
• Finance – possibly sources of finance or working capital management.
• Business process change.

Paper P5
• Corporate failure.
• Quality – possibly six sigma.
• The Performance Prism.
• Reward schemes.

Source Becker/PQ Magazine