I had to relearn on the hop and hate to say it, but felt quite comfortable with the HMRC publication SAT1 - here's the PDF
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/pdfs/sat1.pdf
It's nothing to be afraid of and in order to submerge the rules in the grey matter - I'd take the approach that Gary/Clawz did on a recent Accruals thread of laying out a couple of years by month in a spreadsheet and applying the rules on page 4 (in my version) of SAT1
Very often accounts will cross over 5th April so profits are earned in more than one tax year. EG. Accounts written up to 31 January 2012 - Commenced 15 January 2011 - TOTAL 381 days - Profits £10,000
Year 1 ACTUAL YEAR BASIS - to isolate a portion of the profits at the beginning of trade to 5th April - 16 + 28 + 31 + 5 = 80 days (JanFebMarApl) therefore £10,000 / 381= 26.25 per day * 80days = £2100
Year 2 12 MONTHS TO THE ACCOUNTING DATE - This rule obtains a 365day portion of the first years profits and settles the normal pattern of when profits are taxed. 1 February 2011 to 31 January 2012, being the Period End date. therefore £10,000 / 381 * 365 = £9580
I'm sure you'll have more questions and there are lots of other rules but generally, try to remember the bits in bold after Year 1 and 2 and with practice the rest will follow.
Let me know how you go on, bud.
take care, Tim
(Don't worry about deciding on a year end just yet)
Yer welcome. lol your last comment took me on a grammar test on another thread (blame Neil everyone) :o)
I wouldn't normally say this but before getting bogged down on the subsequent pages, skip to pg27 SAT1 for a little overview of the profits that are taxed twice (1st Feb 2011 to 5th April 2011) known as Overlap. It might help with the intervening pages.
Overlap profits are easy enough to work out now i've nailed the timings. I was alright with first year to 5 april, then second year full 12 months, but had a question with longer periods and seemed to keep adjusting and adjusting into the future lol. A bit like when i type Banananananananana.............it just seems to go on.
how do you fancy a return to the old Friday challenge.
there are no tricks in this one. Very straight forwards but its a subject that is well worth chatting about on the site with examples.
If you fancy having a go try this question Neal. If not I'll show the answers and we can chat about them.
Its fine with these to do your calculations using months rather than days.
Sole trader business Commences on the 1st October 2010
Period to 30th June 2011 £12,000
Period to 30th June 2012 £30,000
Period to 30th June 2013 £36,000
Questions :
(a) What is the first year of assessment
(b) What is the assessment in the first year
(c) What is the assessment in the second year
(d) What is the assessment in the third year
(e) How much overlap profit was created by the above scenario.
If you don't fancy trying it, no worries
All the best,
Shaun.
__________________
Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
b) 1/10/2010 - 5/4/2011 = 6/9 x 12000 = 8000 - Correct
c) 12 month accounts = 1/10/2010 to 30/06/2011 = 12000 - Correct
1/07/2011 to 30/09/2011 = 7500 (3/12 x 30000) - Correct
Total 19500 - Correct
d) 2012 to 2013 = 30000 - Correct
e) (42000-27500) 15500 - Correct(you get to the right answer a different way to me but whatever works for you)
At least let me get one right.
Excellent Neil,
all seven points in the five questions completely correct.
With the last one I lift the answer from the timeline so £8k + £7.5k for the overlap periods of 01/10/10 to 05/04/11 and 30/06/11 to 30/09/11 respectively to reach £15.5k but as I say, whatever works for you.
Ok, thats opening periods done. Is it closing periods next or change of accounting date?
all the best,
Shaun.
__________________
Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
I have held my breath for the last 15 minutes lol.
I think i can safely move on now, it seems to be sticking. I did watch SOME of the Opentuition lectures for F6 last night (chapter 6) and up until then i was
using the timeline to extract the overlap profits, but the tutor did it this way. 2 ways of finding the same answer can only be good.
At the moment we have our Granddaughter living with us (4 y/o) and she'd much rather i be a shopkeeper or a cook in her kitchen than watch anything other than
Shaun, i'm thinking of buying 3 old study texts for ACCA off amazon just to see how i feel. Will i have any major problems with the age of the books for f4 f5 and f6 (apart from the tax dates for f6 which i can adjust)
I'm going for the First 3 ACCA and the same for CIMA or CGMA whatever AFTER exemptions, i don't really know what i'm looking to do (apart from aquire them all for under 20 quid) yet, apart from get a feel of the "Jump" or "Step up" as it's known.
don't buy F6 second hand. Its a waste of money as tax rules change every year. Its not just rates and dates but there are more serious changes and learning old rules does more harm than good.
Also remember that the ACCA changes the syllabus between sittings. For example half of P5 recently disappeared into P3 recently.
You don't have to do F4 to F9 in the order given and there are papers that will benefit from being taken together.
Lets go through them and identify which ones to take together and which ones old textx would be ok.
F4 Corporate and business law Do alone, Do not try anything else at the same sitting. You need to remember and be able to apply a couple of hundred pieces of case law including the date. Index card learning style is an essential approach to this paper. Use both Kaplan AND BPP study texts from within the last 3 years.
F5 Performance management Management accounting paper so doesn't change a great deal from paper to paper. Builds on knowledge brought forwards from paper F2.
Use the kaplan study texts for F5, P3 and P5 from within the last 5 years and study the Opentuitions lectures for the same. F5 and F9 are complementary and could be sat together.
F6 Taxation
No matter how cheap, any old study materials is a waste of money and could prove detrimental to learning. If you have reently done the tax papers with AAT you may want to move this to the first paper or if not consider doing this paper on its own using Kaplan only study texts for both F6 and P6.
The BPP I-learn CD is essential for this one but with i-learn do not buy second hand as they are single user, single use licences... Ansd yes, I have ended up with an ebay coffee mug coaster from buying cheap!
F7 Financial reporting F8 Audit and assurance
Do these two together and treat almost as if they were a single paper. F8 expects all of the current knowledge for F7 and builds on that with audit specific standards, ethics and regulations.
Use Kaplan study texts from the past year for F7 (IFRS's are still in constant flux) and post 2009 for F8
You will benefit from also acquiring the Kaplan study materials for ACCA paper P7 post 2009.
F9 Financial management
If financial accounting and management accounting had a baby this would be it.
Fits more on the management accounting side and should be considered either with F5 or alone
Use Kaplan texts, doesn't have to be the current version. but as always the newer the text the less liekly that the syllabus will have moved on.
Even though you are not taking F1, F2 and F3 I would strongly advise acquiring versions of the BPP study texts for papers 1.1, 1.2 and 2.4 that are pre 2006 before BPP dumbed down their texts.
Even now I still refer to the 1.1, 1.2 and 2.4 classics which are vintage 2002 versions.
You can pick them up for pennies but they are worth their weight in gold for content.
Hope that this helps and that you have not purchased the F6 text yet.
kind regards,
Shaun.
__________________
Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
I haven't purchased anything yet, i was thinking (if i choose ACCA) of doing Tax first as i will have recently finished AAT Personal and Business tax modules and looking through the ACCA books there are only a couple of extra chapters.
The reason for buying the books now is that i can pick them up for 1.99-ish and i wanted them simply, as i say, to measure the leap from AAT to ACCA if i were to take the exemptions, and not for study purpose. I just didn't want to be measuring using learning
materials that were no better than second hand bog roll.
I'm getting a little excited now as the time to make some big decisions, that could savagely affect my future, is drawing near lol.
Thank you for the advice, ( i wish i could read more in the "look inside" on amazon lol)
I've been thinking about F7 and F8 overnight and although the changes there are less dramatic over the past couple of years than the tax papers they could also prove your downfall to use out of date versions.
In for the 2012 sittings financial standards around consolidations, associates and financial instuments have changed including four new standards (IFRS10,11,12 and 13).
With audit ISA545 has been subsumed within ISA540, ISA260 has been broken down into ISA260 and ISA265 and there is a new standards ISA450. There have also been name changes to some of the standards although you will pick that up from the free list of examinable documents from the ACCA website.
I still feel that F4, F5 and F9 could be obtained relatively cheaply from Amazon resellers.
F7 and F8 could be passed from older materials but there is a big associated risk and the ACCA do seem to favour testing the latest changes to the standards and syllabus at the sitting immediately following the change.
F6 is definitely not better than used toilet paper when sitting the ACCA papers
Don't foget to favour Kaplan texts when buying study materials.
With the tax papers I also buy this book every year :
You won't need that one though until P1 but you will reference it during P1, P3, P4 and P5.
The above books may seem expensive but if you adhere to the ACCA suggested reading lists you would spend a fortune and I believe that the above are all that you will need (the tax one is a nice to have above the Kaplan texts, the other two are essential reading... Even if like myself you find yourself disagreeing with JSW or thinking "but you stole that idea from Porter").
With most books and courses on discs don't buy them until you need them and always run the version that you are about to buy past me and I'll let you know if its a bargain or a waste of money.
Also worth noting when buying ACCA texts second hand. Its a lottery... Some books are great. Others have minor highlighting and corrections.. A few look as though they were given to a five year old to colour in!
So far I've had one when the seller did say the book had some highlighting.
What they didn't say was it was they had used a dark blue highlighter that makes what's underneath almost unreadable to the point of the book being like one of those Government documents with key words blanked out.
Its the only book that I have ever thrown in the trash.
As I said yesterday. If you can try and get some old 2002 BPP study texts espechially for the old papers 1.1, 1.2 and 2.4 whilst you still can. You can buy them for pennies but these are the core books with the serious formulae in them and that never changes.
I managed to pick up a 3.5 and 3.7 from that year a couple of weeks ago myself to add to the classics shelf (both perfect condition for 1p plus p&p of £2.80 ).
As for whether or not you decide to go down this path... Well, thats a decision that only you can make but even if you don't I would certainly buy and read BPP 1.1, 1.2 and 2.4 from 2002 plus Cost and Management Accounting by Colin Drury (2004 edition).
Thats all practical stuff, no theory. If you want to know about analysis, marketing, etc. that's a different set of books.
Hope that helps and also saves you a few bob matey,
kind regards,
Shaun.
__________________
Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
Not listened to that one but he's an absolute star in the P5 lectures.
The guy deserves his own fan club.
I'm sure that as much of each lecture is anacdotes and jokes but somehow you come out of the other side of the lectures knowing the stuff where if they were dry lectures containing twice the content I'm sure only half as much would be maintained.
Sharp intake of breath. F4 first... Its the leat like anything that you have encountered with AAT.
To my mind this is the one that I found the most fun as I'm nosey and love learning case law.
Did you manage to get all of the books that you wanted from Amazon resellers?
all the best,
Shaun.
__________________
Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
Unfortunately i was declared "designated driver" over the weekend and have gotten nowt done for myself, i wish that i had come out of this and been able to say "well, at least i haven't got a hangover" but alas, i feel rough as a dog without even drinking!
don't know why the AAT separate business and personal tax.
after doing these maybe a good idea to take F6 first as you'll be ready for it by June.
all the best,
Shaun.
__________________
Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
F6 was my thinking too. (F6 and F4 in the first year, just to give me a taster, then hopefully 3 papers per annum thereafter)
I would advise anyone sitting the 2 AAT tax exams to take personal tax first, as they overlap but make much more sense this way.
I used Personal Tax as kind of an 'introduction to taxation'. found it rather tedious and boring though.
Business Tax is where it's at, some good old calculations and workings. Still looking for loopholes lol.
Cheers Shaun.
Neil.
P.S. actually, really looking forward to F4, may have to start reading the text as a bedtime read. This is since i ended up spending the day on Wiki bouncing
Thanks Timbo, like i've said before, this forum and the regulars are not only a massive help, but also a source of inspiration.
Just got to work on my sense of humour as this is undoubtedly going to be my downfall.
I need to learn that there's a time and place, or more specifically, which time and place others deem it appropriate to have a laugh as i can't seem to work it out lol.
I tell you what i've found the hardest while doing level 4, being able to move onto study for the next exam while awaiting previous results, absolute nightmare. Had to kick and slap myself silly on more than one occasion.
