Examiners Insight to F6 for June 2009 - ACCA Global Accountancy Discussion Forums

acca · 05-13-2009, 09:58 PM

Latest developments from the F6 examiner - David Harrowven

At the ACCA teacher’s conference, a presentation was made which discussed students’ performance in F6, and provided insights into how performance can be improved. These comments are relevant to students taking all national variants of the tax paper.

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Common problems seen on students’ scripts included:
 The taxation of capital gains caused a problem in December 2007, with this issue often making the difference between a pass and a fail.
 Self-assessment rules were not understood in June 2008, despite this being covered in an examiner’s article.

There were however some strong points in students’ scripts:
 In December 2008 in particular, candidates performed very well, with many candidates scoring over 90%

The following tips were given to candidates attempting F6:
 Students should not rely on doing well in Q1 and Q2 in order to secure a pass. Q4 is very important in determining if a script scores an overall pass or fail. Students must manage their time well to ensure enough time is left for the final questions on the paper.
 The examiner specifically commented on the importance of the syllabus areas of capital gains, VAT and NIC.
 For capital gains, it is important to know the main exemptions, in order to avoid wasting time on irrelevant questions in the exam.
 There is no need to explain every working that is provided. The examiner’s model answers to questions clearly show where marks are obtained. Students often waste time providing a written explanation, which is not asked for.

ACCAHELP advises all F6 students to:
 Put in plenty of question practice, using past F6 questions. You should practice questions under timed exam conditions to get used to managing your time.
 Make sure you use questions from approved study material that have been updated for recent changes to the Finance Act - exam kits.
 In tax there is no substitute for learning the rules. Start your studying early to give yourself enough time to learn the tax rules from the whole syllabus.
 Keep up to date with articles on the student resources section of the ACCA website. Recent articles cover capital gains, the new Finance Act (UK), joint and separate assessment, and VAT rules relevant in the Czech Republic variant.[/SHOWTOGROUPS]