Personal Tax exam ! - Please help

azzy

Hi

can anyone inform me how was thier personal tax exam? any feed back would help!

Am sitting mine next week.

Thanks in advance ! :ohmy::001_unsure:

stephleedz

Hi,

Fairly similar to mock on AAT website, just be wary of there being more theory true false questions than originallly expected.

I can't comment exactly as although at sat the exam alittle over 4weeks ago not had my results as yet.

Steph

Starryeyes

Hi,

I sat it a few weeks ago, I had a question on NiNo classes and How much penalty for not keeping adequate accounts.

my written question was about payment on account.
Section 2 was very much similar to practice ones but I found section 1 quite hard, make sure you have read your books and know your stuff.

Good luck

anniebabe

Azzie - which FA are you doing?
I sit mine next week too - FA 2011/12

Starryeyes - what is NiNo classes?? havent heard that crop up ?

guinea pig

Hi Anniebabe,
I hadn't heard of NiNo either! Could it be a 2010/11 question? Anyway, I've just googled, and here's the details;
NIM39125 - National Insurance Numbers (NINOs): Format and Security: Who needs a NINO?

An individual must apply for a NINO if they are:
•workers who are employees or self employed
•entitled and want to pay voluntary Class 3 NICs to maintain their NI record and would benefit from making the payment
•claiming state benefit or tax credits
•advised by Student Loan Company that they need to supply their NI Number in connection with an application for a student loan.

NINOs are used by
•HMRC to record NICs and Credits, administer Child Benefit and Tax Credits
•DWP - if a person makes a claim to benefit, DWP use the NI account to check entitlement based on their NICs and credits record. Claimants are required by law to produce their NINO or sufficient information to trace or allocate a NINO when they claim benefit.
•employers who need to record NICs - an employee is required to tell their employer their NINO so it can be entered on the payroll records.
•employers who may ask prospective employees to produce a NINO to help provide a defence against charges of illegal working under section 8 of the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996. The list of documents capable of being used as a defence includes "a document issued by a previous employer, HMRC, DWP or Employment Services which contains a person's NI Number". (This does not affect HMRC/DWP Policy on issuing NINOs).

Happy revising!
GP

anniebabe

Thanks for the info GP, glad its not just me that hasnt looked at that, was rooting through my books thinking I had seriously missed something.

JodieR

Basically, the different classes of National Insurance are:

* Class 1 which is paid by employees and employers based on how much the employee earns in a week/month
* Class 1A which is paid by employers based on the amount of benefits provided to employees
* Class 2 which is a small flat weekly payment made by most self employed people
* Class 3 which is voluntary contributions made by someone who's not working but doesn't want to loose their entitlement to state benefits
* Class 4 which is paid by self employed people based on their profits

You should be able to find all the rates/exemptions/conditions etc on HMRC's website.

Jodie

azzy

many thanks

uknitty

Ni no's are definitely not mentioned in the Osbourne text for FA 10. Are they assessable under this sylabus ?

peaceb4

uknitty, its not covered in the Osborne AT ALL (FA2010), yet it came up on my Tax paper last week!! Gutted!!! As i know i got that WRONG!!!

Overall that paper was far more complex than i thought, alot of the time we were refering to 2009 or earlier!!

uknitty

I've also checked the examinable standards for personal tax and can't see any mention of NI no's in there.

I have both Kaplan and Osbourne books and neither mention classes of national insurance. Is there any chance that you had a finance act 2009 paper ? Not quite sure how that could have happened but this doesn't make much sense to me (and is making me a touch jittery about my exam on Thursday !)

guinea pig

Hi all,
Just sat the 2011/12 Personal tax paper today, no mention of Nino's
GP

uknitty

I posted a query on the AAT Facebook page, and someone has advised that Ni No's are part of the business tax sylabus.

Is there any chance that the exam centre could have given you a business tax exam in error ? Other possibility is that a business tax question somehow randomly sneaked in to a personal tax exam.

I would definitely email AAT student support and make them aware of this - they can take this in to account when marking your paper.

peaceb4

there were a few unexpected things in there or a question was not asked in depth and we had to work on presumptions!! :-(

the NiNo stuff was based on contract of service and contract for service...which item is for which type. i can't remeber the EXACT question seeing as i didnt know the answer.....however a few people in my class got this question also!

the teacher said its unfair as this was not taught in the books and sounds more like something for Business tax!

uknitty

Was the question " Responsible for paying own tax and national insurance or Has tax and national insurance deducted at source?"

If so I have seen versions of this question in textbooks. If someone makes deductions from your wages you are generally employed and if you have to do it yourself then self employed.

peaceb4

"Responsible for paying own tax and national insurance "...yes i think this one was there (minus the 'own' - hence why i thought don't we all pay tax regardless!) and the other question was something to do with Class 1

Starryeyes

I've not been on here since i posted the comment about Ni no, really sorry, I've opened a can of worms haven't I....

My question was about who pays class 3 and class 4, I didn't know the answer, I guessed as like you have all said, its not covered in any book, and my tutor was stumped when I told him that was one of my questions.

It does mention in the osbourne book, that Nino won't be covered in this topic.

Hope you all did better than me, as I failed it.... might ask for feedback from eat!!!

guinea pig

Hi Starryeyes,
Sorry to hear that, hope that the feedback is helpful, and you have better luck next time. You must have been one of the first to sit the 2011 exam? which is pain with limited practice material.
Did your results come quite quickly? I did the exam 2 weeks ago, so I'm frantically waiting for results!
GP

SarahJS

I'm sorry to hear that the exam didn't go your way, hardly surprising if things like NINOs cropped up.

I sat PT11 today and nothing came up that wasn't quite obviously in the syllabus, there was a few is this taxable or not questions and limits for christmas party expenditure before benefit questions that definately weren't in my textbook, and as I self study I could only take a best guess. Afew of the questions were worded abit ambiguously too- I wish more of he exam was written so I could write shor explanations about my interpretations!

Starryeyes

thanks guys, i got my exam results back in 5 weeks. I've not contacted aat yet, but think I might get onto it today.
i had some feedback from my tutor, but its not very helpful.
We could definately do with more study material couldn't we.

SarahJS

Starryeyes wrote: »

thanks guys, i got my exam results back in 5 weeks. I've not contacted aat yet, but think I might get onto it today.
i had some feedback from my tutor, but its not very helpful.
We could definately do with more study material couldn't we.

Have you had the standard feedback sheet? Can you tell from that which areas let you down? As far as I've read the official feedback you pay for isn't a great help forthe cost.

I've always foundthe exceeded/met/borderline/fail sheet really useful, apart from sometimes having no idea what could have classed as some of the topics (maybe that's why I got worse marks in them!)

As I knew that I'd be weeks until the level 4 results after the exams I wrote down as much as I could remember about what numbers the tasks were (and how confident I was with the answers). Hopefully this will jog my mind back to the exam when results are out. Maybe an idea for future exams?

guinea pig

Hi Luciana,
Here's the thread; NINO's - hope it helps.
GP