Indirect tax exam problems

lonerkamal

Hi, I just did my resit for the indirect tax and still failed. I practiced through all the online assessment and did the same process in the actual exam and failed. How is that possible? Is the online assessments wrong or something. I know what I did was right but I still failed. Does anybody had the same problem? By the way the it was reading Kaplan.

Vlee

Hello

Sorry to hear you are struggling with this exam. I'm currently waiting to hear back about my exam booking and have studied from a Kaplan book. I've done all the practice tests and green lights too. The only suggestion I can think of is to buy another text book by a different publisher. I have a BPP book which I'm going to use as revision and hope it will make it stick better by trying two different approaches. If you have a tutor it would be worth asking them, or if not you could sign up for this module as a distance learner for the tutor support.

The other aspect may be that you didn't read the questions carefully enough, this is my biggest problem. If the format of the exam is very similar to the practice tests you may have assumed what they asked and missed a vital piece of information. I did this by assuming it was standard rated VAT and didn't read the reduced rate.

I did read that you really need to nail the VAT return, so any other question books or examples you can get you hands on to for it and if you are working ask to do the real thing or talk to the person responsible.

If anyone has recommendations of books or online resources to help I would be interested too.

Jo Clark

BPP books, both text and question bank.
Osborne books and they also have a few online practice questions.
Greenlights, as already mentioned.

And RTFQ..... Read The Full Question.... and then read it again so you answer the question being asked, not what you think it is asking

Good luck Vlee and good luck with your resit lonerkamal.


JC

lonerkamal

I read the whole thing thoroughly. Even checked it three times. The main problem for me was the section 2. It's just straight forward answer but none of them were exceeded. They were either met or did not met. I will go for third time, if it is the same thing, that means theres just no hope for me. Thanks for the suggestion about the revision materials.

Jo Clark

With some exams, I seem to recall reading that you can only met/did not met as there is no way to achieve an exceed etc. There are also several posts where you may be marked as 'did not met' but you may not have been asked a question to cover that criteria.... trying searching for posts by NPS who received advice about this from the AAT.

Nps

Yes, Jo is correct. I asked the AAT about it and the lady on the phone said it was true. Apparently if a topic is not even examined, you will be shown as not yet met as you didn't answer any questions on it. So if only 1 question on a topic, you can only get not yet met, or exceeded, as borderline is not possible, etc etc.

Personally I think it's a very odd system and I may have been given wrong info, but my own feedback sheets seem to follow that pattern, ie being shown as not yet competent on a subject that I'm convinced was not examined. Even exams where I'm certain I scored high 90%+ marks have shown numerous not yet competent's (the number of which would suggest a failed paper even though I passed and was confident I'd passed comfortably).

j1994

Any tips for this exam?