CTA exams advice needed

Hi! I've just done CTA exams and they are a tough one! I did the general route i.e. Advisory in OMB & Individuals with Awareness in VAT/IHT/CT.

I did the Advisory papers first - sat both together as there was quite a bit of overlap in the syllabus. I then did the Awareness in the following sitting and because I'd already done Corporation Tax for OMB paper my grounding for the Awareness was pretty solid so I had less to stdy for Awareness.

I went with Tolleys correspondance course which I found to be very good. I attended the revision lectures for the Advisory papers which was so helpful! I didn't for Awareness as I thought my knowledge was good enough to try the exam. Tolleys have all their material as PDFs on the Online Academy and have forums on there where you can ask other students & tutors for help.

I will warn you that the pass rates for the Individuals exam is pretty horrendous (I think about 37% of people who tried it passed it). CTA have set questions on obscure parts of the syllabus in the May & November 2011 sittings. But my advice would be just don't panic!

I can't comment on the Application paper as I didn't have to do it (exemption because of ACA).

Useful links for you:

Tolleys - http://academy.tolleytraining.co.uk/

CTA Group on LinkedIn - http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=3929536&trk=hb_side_g

The reason you ahve probably had few responses is the lack of relevant information eg what is your background, what do you want to achieve, where do you see yourself working in the future!  The CTA is the gold standard of professional exams and not to be taken lightly.

If you want to run your own practice the general route is the one to go down.  The pass rates vary quite widely from paper to paper and are helpfully summarised on the ciot website.  If you take into account that everyone sitting these exams already has a professional qualification they are low, but better than they used to be - there was a sitting in 1998 when the pass rate was 13%! 

My own view is that you should try for all four papers in one sitting, by distance learning backed by a proper course just before the exams.

CTA might be overkill if you are looking to practice generally.  The ATT would give you a solid grounding in tax and cover most of what you would see in real life.

You might even want to get hold of some ATT books and at least work through them, that way the step to CTA will be smaller.  Having said that, I only intended to read the ATT books (I'm ACCA too) as a step to the CTA, and ended up doing 5 of the ATT exams 'for giggles'. 

Noting your intent to have your own practice in the future.  If you ahve a rough idea geographically of where you want to practice, I would then look at the existing competition in the area and see what qualifications they hold.  If none of them have the CTA, then I would certainly pursue this route as a way of differentiating your practice and giving you a USP for your intended area "Chartered Accountants and Chartered Tax Advisers" will certainly draw in more clients than basic "Accountant". 

If you are in employment now then it is likely that your employer will bear the cost of the CTA exams so why not?

The point I do agree with the previous poster is that the ATT may well give you sufficient general practice tax knowledge - the CTA will take you to a level where you can deal with more complex questions.  Having said that the ATT would be good for you as basic knowledge - "for giggles" is not a fair reflection of the standard!

The ATT exams are, of course, not a giggle (except to me as exams are my personal addiction) and will give a firm base in tax.  It is however rare that I can't do something my CTA colleague can, in the same way my A level in physics doesn't make me any better at changing light bulbs.

But if you are the sole tax person at your practice, it will likely be much more useful.

Also I do wonder whether the blanket 'oh well, you're employed, you can do it for free' attitude is still relevant.  My employer (and my previous employer) wouldn't pay a penny for my ATT studies (hence the cheap route of a book and an exam being my only choice), there is absolutely no way they will pay for my CTA.  So I need to save several thousand if I want to do it.