Rounding errors!

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seanyoungs
seanyoungs Registered Posts: 8
in General discussion - Professional level
Is anyone else finding a problem with rounding up/down when doing practice assessments? I've just been doing the online personal tax ones and find that even when it says to round to the nearest whole number, the answers always round down, even when the decimal is .8 Does anyone know what the best course of action is for the actual assessment? I'm concerned the examiner will read my answers in the human marked bit and mark it wrong because the last digit's different. (I realise that they say you can go either way in most circumstances but being as there has been a lot of problems with AQ2016 I would rather err on the side of caution)

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  • Irrorate
    Irrorate Registered Posts: 139
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    Have you got an example of this? Generally I've noticed rounding follows standard mathematics concepts.
  • seanyoungs
    seanyoungs Registered Posts: 8
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    Irrorate said:

    Have you got an example of this? Generally I've noticed rounding follows standard mathematics concepts.

    Happens quite a few times in Personal tax sample 2, e.g. Task 1.4, when asking for employment income, dividends come to 367.50, the question rounds them down to 367. Whereas it was my understanding you always round up .5's, then also Task 1.6 Dividends come to 2177.50, the question again rounds the .5 down, Task 1.10 however, they round up the decimal. Also I believe in sample 1 Task 1.3 they round a couple down when it's higher than .5
  • Irrorate
    Irrorate Registered Posts: 139
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    I've not studied personal tax but is the policy of taxation not that they will only tax on whole £? For the purposes of taxation I thought income tax etc was always rounded down?
  • seanyoungs
    seanyoungs Registered Posts: 8
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    Irrorate said:

    I've not studied personal tax but is the policy of taxation not that they will only tax on whole £? For the purposes of taxation I thought income tax etc was always rounded down?

    As did I, but from doing past papers there doesn't seem to be a clear way of doing it, I think i'm just going to go under the proviso of always rounding in the tax payers favour unless the question states otherwise. It's probably the safest bet.

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