icaew business planning taxation notes

FAR - Full Series

Learn how to ace the aca certificate level exams, financial accounting and reporting (far) , classroom tuition, online tuition, business planning: tax (bpt).

Our BPT tuition is extremely exam focused and once a topic has been taught, we will develop your exam technique by teaching you the most effective way to answer exam questions on that topic. The learning strategies and exam techniques you will be taught resulted in your tutor winning an ICAEW prize and several of our students scoring over 90%. Notably, our two highest BPT scores (95% and 96%) were both achieved by resit students, proving that our guidance and tutoring skills create a vast level of improvement in student exam performance. This tuition approach has resulted in several of our students also winning prizes.

You can watch the course introduction and  FREE SAMPLE CLASSES   below.

OUR PRIZE-WINNING TECHNIQUE

Each class focuses on a frequently examined topic and explains the key technical concepts in a simplified way, before demonstrating the optimal exam technique by working through recent pas t exam questions in full. Your tutor will teach you the most efficient way to read, interpret and analyse the exam paper and most importantly, the specific technique you should use when typing your answer. This includes practical advice on how to make effective use of your open book when answering questions.

Having understood the technical content and exactly how you should be approaching a particular type of BPT exam question, you can then go and attempt similar past exam questions to put these prize-winning exam technique skills to the test and watch your marks drastically improve - hopefully you will join our growing list of prize winners!

PAYMENT AND ACCESS

You can subscribe to all the classes for £350  and enjoy a viewing period of 12 months.

Please click  HERE  to purchase. Once payment has been made, you can view the full course  HERE . ​

Please note that our open book notes are sold separately.

​ ​ PASS GUARANTEE 

The 12 month access period should give you plenty of time to sit and pass the BPT  exam. However, if you need longer, we will gladly extend your access at no extra cost to you. This includes access to any additional c ontent we upload to the course as a result of syllabus changes. 

COURSE STRUCTURE ​

The course is structured so that it covers each examinable area and each type of BPT exam question. You can find a list of the classes on the course structure structure document below. The course also includes 14 TC revision classes to refresh you on brought forward content. 

WHAT STUDENTS SAY

Having failed BPT with 54%, Kieran helped me increase my mark to 96%! He explained everything so clearly and the exam technique sessions were particularly valuable. He went through past paper questions, advising how to approach them, where to pick up easy marks and how to lay out the answers. I would definitely recommend ACA Masters!

(BPT resit student who passed first time with us with a score of 96%)

• Professional Level

Professional Level Business Planning: Taxation

The Business Planning: Taxation module covers the following topics:

• ethics and law
• taxation of corporate entities
• taxation of owner-managed businesses
• personal taxation

Ensure you order the correct edition of the materials. The 2023 edition is aligned with the syllabus and exams for 2023 only. The 2024 edition is aligned with the syllabus and exams for 2024 only. You risk losing exam marks if you use a different edition.

For more information and resources, please visit icaew.com/examresources .

Available editions:

New website launched

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Business planning: taxation. what to do to pass..

We're not going to lie ... BPT is not very nice. Arguably the most complex ACA paper from a technical point of view (yes, even more so than the Advanced Level), things are not made any easier by the fact that the examiners do not tell you how many marks are available for each part of the question paper! Doesn't exactly help with time management. BPT is also tricky because it is a mixture of narrative and calculations (don't overdo the calculations aspects, either in your revision or during the exam: most of the marks are actually for the narrative side of things). However, at least BPT is an open-book exam, so you can at least take some hopefully useful resources (including ours!) into the exam with you. Our popular BPT Exam Room Notes PDF publication provides alphabetically-organised, quick reference notes on all key BPT areas. Originally intended as a resource aimed at exam day (hence the name!), many students report that our BPT Exam Room Notes PDF was actually very useful in the pre-exam phase because they found it easy to locate the content. It seems pretty obvious to us that things are easier if your notes are alphabetically organised but unfortunately the ICAEW Workbook is organised primarily by chapter, so it isn't always so easy to use. We are pleased to announce that we can now offer our BPT Exam Room Notes PDF as an instant download so no more waiting around to receive the document (and no more frustrations with Junk Mail folders either!). Just click the link further down the page to make a purchase. We draw on this content and knowledge in our BPT Masterclass on-demand video course, which focuses on tutor-narrated discussions of our Skeleton Notes (notes based on past paper model answers) so that you can learn the patterns. The course is provided with a full Pass Guarantee (which may seem brave of us since this is after all BPT, but with a 100% pass rate for the course in 2021, 98% in 2022 and 99% in 2023, we are not too worried!). As with all the Professional Level ACA papers, it is vital that you use resources that force you to engage actively with the content: simply reading and note-taking is very unlikely to get the content into your brain! So for BPT, we offer our Rapid Revision Question Bank book which offers over a thousand short-form questions to help you learn both the narrative and number content through a self-test format. Actively testing your knowledge through questions is always the best way to deal with the volume of narrative content in this kind of paper. We can also offer our Technique Improvement Service to review your Mock practice attempts to unlock further valuable marks through improvements in writing style, interpretation of the question and other factors. Scroll down the page to learn more about our BPT offering.

100% active learning.

Our Rapid Revision Question Banks provide hundreds of short-form questions to help you learning in a 100% active way, maximising the use of your scarce study time.

Some stats on our BPT Rapid Revision Question Bank.

Contains over 1,000 short-form questions to promote active learning.

The 2024 edition of our RRQB is the twelfth edition of the book so you will benefit from a wide range of question types which we have developed over the years.

Zoning out-free zone.

To keep you engaged with our technical revision and exam technique lectures, our BPT Masterclass on-demand course includes interactive questions mixed into the videos. This ensures that you fully absorb the key learning points from each segment of the course. Like all our Professional Level on-demand courses, as we are so confident that our technique works, our BPT Masterclass on-demand course is provided with a full money-back Pass Guarantee. So provided that you purchase the course at least 3 weeks before exam day and that you complete all content at least once (ideally more!), we will provide a full refund of your course fee if you do not pass your exam in 2024!

Some stats on our BPT Masterclass on-demand course.

>20 hours.

Our BPT Masterclass on-demand course includes over 20 hours of video content, all carefully organised to focus on one element of the syllabus at a time, reducing overwhelm and helping you focus your studies.

Students who used the 2023 edition of our BPT Masterclass on-demand course had a 99% pass rate! So we have no problem offering a full money-back Pass Guarantee on our BPT Masterclass on-demand course

Unlock your potential

Often, students do not achieve their full potential in an ACA paper because they have not been told how to write, how to manage their time and how the marking works. Our Technique Improvement Service (TIS) provides detailed, personalised reviews of your attempts at ICAEW Mocks or past papers.

Writing style

You will receive advice on how to shorten or lengthen your writing style to ensure that you are picking up the marks you deserve.

Time management

You will receive advice on whether you are allocating your scarce answering time correctly through our expert knowledge of the markscheme and how marks are awarded in practice.

Technique Advice Report

To really drive home our advice, we will provide you with a 2-3 page Technique Advice Report on each paper submitted. This includes our popular "5 Top Tips to Improve".

What our students say.

Thanks for the feedback, which is really useful and definitely highlighted some key points I need to work on. I really do appreciate the work done which has given me some reassurance. Thanks again for all your support: this has enabled me to tackle this exam from a different angle, which I would not have been able to do with the other providers.

I am currently preparing for the 3 Advanced Level papers and have bought your Exam Room Notes for CR (both books) and SBM. I previously used your BPT Exam Room Notes and similar to that resource, I think they're really great.

I have long been using your books throughout my ACA studies, and have found them to be invaluable in helping me pass the exams up to now. Many thanks for producing such great quality revision books.

I purchased the Exam Room Notes for the BPT exam (which I comfortably passed) and found really useful. I had one point in the exam where I couldn't remember covering something but was able to find it quickly in the book and  answer the question. I don't think without these notes and the really useful  referencing, I would have been able to pass.

Thank you so much!! :) I really like the Cracking Case book so far, it has helped me so much more than my tuition provider! I had no doubt about it as your notes helped me get 83% in BPT in 2019!

I can't thank you enough for the resources you have provided me to help me pass my BPT exam - the Exam Room Notes and the videos definitely gave me an  essential structure in my mind that I needed to work my way round the syllabus and I ended up with a fantastic result (75%)! I would definitely recommend you guys!

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Jag's Journey

Sharing my life experiences including the Associate Chartered Accountant (ACA) qualification

How to Pass the “Hardest ACA Exam” BPT: Including Open Book File Made Easy

If you are reading this, you are likely to either be at the dreaded moment where your Business Planning: Taxation (BPT) exam is approaching or you are intrigued about the ACA myth itself. Before you read on, just know that I have been in your position in 2019. It is an unsettling time and initially BPT probably is the most overwhelming ACA exam. That being said I do/did not rate BPT as the hardest ACA exam in the end. I went from 44 in a mock exam (the only one I failed) to achieving 81 in the real exam #notbraggingbutmadeitgreen . I hope this article gives you the confidence you need to pass BPT and I will share what worked for me!

Fun fact: BPT used to be an Advanced Level exam which means you are almost there at this point. Hang in there.

Table of Contents

What is the bpt exam actually like, mastering the skill, approach: should i spend a lot of time recapping tc and learning the content for bpt, bpt summary notes, icaew bpt question bank, model answers, sticky tabs and icaew bookshelf, bpt question reference sheet, walkthrough of my open book, nail your timing of the bpt exam.

I have already provided a breakdown of this exam but I will provide a short recap if you need it. BPT stands for Business Planning: Taxation. Yes, a tax exam. Tax Compliance is the exam where you need to perform the tax calculations itself. BPT however has a different angle. There is much more, wider tax content involved and you are instead required to provide tax advice . You are required to talk through taxes rather than performing the calculations itself although a small degree of this could be asked for.

This 2.5 hour open book exam is extremely, extreeeeemely time pressured but the content is quite consistent in terms of the syllabus areas. It will cover taxation of corporate entities, owner managed businesses and personal taxation. However, each syllabus area has so many different possible combinations of tax laws, topics and scenarios that each exam can be completely different. It also requires a vast amount of application but this does not mean you cannot pick up easy marks.

Easy Marks in BPT?!

Before I get into the more complicated areas and risk you feeling overwhelmed, let’s get you feeling positive . As hard as the exam is rumoured to be and can be, BPT does still have some easy marks available!

A big part of the exam is mastering the skill of identifying the relevant tax rule to the scenario in question. Once you can do this, you can really pick up some easy marks here. By stating the basics of the tax rule you spot applies to the question, with a good open book file which we will come to, you will pick up at least a few marks for each. This is why it is important to get through the whole exam . Spending longer getting deeper into a tax concept will hinder your success if it means you are missing the easy initial marks elsewhere.

At this point you may be thinking, “but Jag, how is that easy when you need to master the skill?” . This is a very good point. Try not to roll your eyes when I say this but the only way to master this skill and to get those easy marks is through practise . These marks are only easy if you put in the work. I kid you not, I went through all 60 ICAEW question bank questions in detail. It took me a very long time to master this skill and this happened after the mock but before the exam, hence my drastic mark increase in the real exam.

Note : If you have read my previous blog , you will know I did take some time off before the exam which is why this was achievable for me. Do not get disheartened if you do not have enough time to do this and it is not necessary to pass. Do as much revision and question practise as you can without burning out!

Do not get me wrong, I did not master this skill entirely of course as there is just way too much content and sneakiness in the exam. It does get easier though. When I first started practising, I was probably picking up about 20% of the relevant taxes in the question. I’d read the answer after a rubbish attempt and be shocked at everything I completely missed. Fast forward to the exam stage after all my question practise I would say this was around 75-85% . Remember, there are actually more marks available for the BPT questions than the maximum number of marks (cha-ching) . Go easy on yourself, you do not need to know it all!

It is not all bad, wishy-washy “just practise” news – I do have some treasure to give you…

Ethics. As an ACA student, you should know by the BPT stage that every exam after Certificate Level will have ethics marks up for grabs. In BPT there are around 5-10% ethics marks . You should aim on maxing out these marks. Ethics is not always simple but you can use your open book to help you on this. Write down all the different ethical scenarios such as tax evasion, avoidance, money laundering and so on. Then match the model answers from the ICAEW question bank to each topic as you go along. You will then have an ethics answer reference guide . All you need to do is ensure you APPLY it to the exam scenario. BPT is all about application.

If you can choose, I would advise sitting BPT after TC . It is however possible to sit/pass BPT first (a girl in my class did). Recap the content from tax compliance (TC) if you have sat this exam prior to BPT but you really do not need to go overboard here. As stated above, BPT focuses much more on tax advice rather than the calculations itself. It is good to have a good understanding of how to do the calculations such as income tax, CGT, etc but you do not need to go overboard nailing the calculations and all the little details. You have already proved/will prove you can do this in TC.

Disclaimer : this is my own personal opinion based on how I approached the exam. I have read around 60% of the marks in the BPT exam are for technical matters already tested in the TC exam . This does not mean you need to do perform 60% of the calculations, although there may be a few. It means you need the understanding to advise which is why you arguably do need to recap the content thoroughly before attempting questions.

My approach was to throw myself into BPT question practise and learn/recap from there. This was usually my approach with the majority of ACA exams. It is up to you which method you prefer but if you do throw yourself in, your debriefs of the answers need to be thorough . This enabled me to identify any weak areas . I would then learn/recap the content so I could get better at is as I went along.

I did take my TC question bank in the exam with me as a comfort blanket . I thought I could find a model answer for a calculation I needed to talk through or show a small part of. However, I did not end up finding it and had to move on . Had I followed my own advice, I would have just missed out the extra hard marks to get the easier ones later on. In reality, I actually did not get to answer all aspects of one of the questions and had to miss marks out. Luckily, it was only a few marks in the end so I was fine but I was worried though.

In terms of the new  BPT content , I would say it is important to have a decent understanding of the new concepts to begin with. However, remember this is a completely open book exam so do not think you need to nail the content first thing. Your understanding will develop as you come to practise the questions . Again, you can spend time learning the content first but practise is key as so much application is required. That being said, I do know someone who did not do too much question practise but still passed. I would say this is very risky though because of how much BPT is a skills based application exam.

Let’s now get to the good stuff, the open book…

Preparing the Open Book File for BPT

Before I start explaining what worked for me , I should highlight the fact that I am aware that ICAEW materials are now digital . This does make it harder to some extent to have the same approach I will outline below. However, it is still feasible and I will add in pointers to help make this doable.

Preparing an open book can be very overwhelming . Tutors would talk about this amazing open book that would have all the answers but did not really go on to reveal any details for how to go about it. Everyone’s approach can be different and so when it came to it, I honestly had no idea where to start. I can now say that a good starting point would be by trying not to reinvent the wheel .

If you are studying with Kaplan / BPP they should provide you with a workbook and summary notes . If not/additionally, ask people at your place of work if they have any good summary notes too as chances are they could do. I did this and these are the notes I used and will show below. Be careful though as tax rules and bands can change from year to year so if you do use other summary notes make sure you update them accordingly. You can also buy these but I do not think this is necessary.

Summary notes are good to use as the basis of the open book file. These would outline the basic knowledge/concepts and then from there you can add key points to it and really build onto it. The building really came along as I did question bank practise and when doing a thorough debrief of the answers . To have a solid open book, you should definitely incorporate the ICAEW BPT Question Bank to know where the marks are.

As stated in “ 5 best ways to Minimise Exam Stress “, I would work backwards from the exam date , plan how many questions I needed to do (60 – leaving some for college) and then pencil these in for specific dates. This worked out to be by practising around one ICAEW Question Bank question a day. In hindsight, what would have worked well is by practising questions with the same key topics on consecutive days . The ICAEW BPT Question Bank should have a contents table at the front to help with this. However, I feel I just planned the questions randomly and it was still fine.

Using my throwing myself in approach, initially with the first 10-15 questions I was really out of my depth . I wouldn’t even actually spend that long attempting the question because I knew I would struggle even with my notes. I would write down the few taxes I could spot that were relevant. This is where having good content knowledge from the onset could help. However, where I really then built up my content knowledge was by spending up to an hour debriefing the model answer. Of course you are never expected to pick up everything but this is where I really started to work on mastering the skill of identifying relevant taxes to the questions.

When going through the answer to a practise question, this is where I would start tying answers into my summary notes and building the file. I would find the relevant section in the summary notes and write down the question reference to have it as a good example to look back to. For example, a small “QB56” above the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) summary notes. I would then also write down any key parts of the answer that are generic and could be applied to other questions such as good introductions or general things to say.

As time went on, as I had started building the open book file up my confidence began to grow. My content knowledge was getting to where it needed to be so I did not need to completely rely on my notes and I was slowly mastering the skill with time. Once you get to this point, and you WILL get to this point, you will find BPT really isn’t THAT bad. This point for me did come quite close to the exam date but I still got there. The real issue with this exam is timing . You should definitely start practising questions to time as early as you can. I will help you with this further below.

When it came closer to the BPT exam and I had gone through most of the questions (leaving a few unseen for last minute testing), I was now familiar with the most popular topics . I would then write up generic answer sheets for these topics such as residency status, sole trader vs company, etc and have references to the best model answers in the ICAEW Question Bank for these topics too. This meant that if these topics came up in the exam I could start writing straight away but making sure to APPLY THE GENERIC ANSWERS TO THE SCENARIO IN THE EXAM . Application is key in BPT!!  

Fortunately for me, I had a great BPT tutor who also sent out model answer sheets for certain topics that would mean I could quickly pick up the easy marks. For example, a ready to go answer for smaller areas such as SEIS. Remember, these marks are only easy if you have mastered the skill to pick these out.

I lived for sticky tabs for this exam! Timing is the biggest struggle with BPT and so to really help cut out time , sticky tabs were key. I would tie the summary notes and the ICAEW Question Bank together with sticky tabs so it was easy to quickly flick to the relevant parts if this came up in the real exam. I did this as I went along because doing this all at the end would have been very long. I know this is where it gets tricky for the Digital Bookshelf as the ICAEW Question Bank is virtual. However, it will still work well for your summary notes.

My approach was to put sticky notes on my summary note pages where I wanted to flag key topics . I did not need to flag everything because with all this practise over time I knew where to look for some. For example, I may not have put a sticky tab for ‘patent box’ but I would know it came straight after ‘IHT’ that was tabbed. I would then use the same colour tab , in the same position along the side for the ICAEW BPT Question Bank answer. On this tab I would write “QB56” for example to flag where the model answer is. I would also annotate on the answer page to make the reference extra clear.

For the digital bookshelf, like I said you can still do this for your summary notes. You will at least be able to access the topics quickly to then find the relevant question online. I do think this could be much more time consuming though.

Here are ways to get around this :

• Use a BPT question reference sheet , as outlined below. The Question Bank will be built into the exam software and students who have used it recently have stated you can search page numbers. Instead of noting down the QB question, write down the page number
• Some students are getting hardcopy ICAEW BPT Question Banks from other students who had them. Although this may work initially, this is perhaps not a good idea as the content, questions and tax rates update. If you do get it early enough to make all the updates needed then this could work well
• Print out the best model answers you think you will need in the exam so you do not have to flick to the ICAEW Bookshelf
• Avoid overreliance on the ICAEW Question Bank for answers to exam questions. Make sure you know which topics it could be very helpful for. Otherwise, have good annotated summary notes, model answer sheets and your brain for the rest!
• Practise makes perfect – start using the ICAEW Bookshelf from very early on (this goes for the ICAEW exam software too) so you are comfortable with it

As you can tell, I had put in a lot of work to build up my open book file over time. Just because this is what worked for me it does not mean the same approach suits you. You may find you would rather spend more time learning the content initially and start off in a stronger position when first attempting any ICAEW Question Bank questions. It really is up to you how you do this.

I would also like to share another approach I have heard of which seemed to work for others. This is where they would create a table with a list of all the different BPT exam topics . They would then write a reference to the best model answers from the ICAEW Question Bank. In a way this cuts out my step of having to go to the summary notes or to my own model answers first to find the reference. You could actually do both as I did for ethics . It is also likely someone else has produced this reference sheet so ask around and see!

Another open book you are provided with for this exam is the tax tables for the year of your exam. I will keep this very brief as I did not really use these much . This is because all of the relevant rates and details would have been included in the summary notes. It is better to have all details in one place rather than wasting time flicking between different sheets if you can. I did still take this into the exam with me; I actually took in my tabbed up TC version as I sat both in 2019. However, I did not look at this at all in the exam.

As stated above, I took the following materials into my BPT exam:

• My annotated and tabbed BPT summary notes
• ICAEW Question Bank also annotated and tabbed
• My model answers including those sheets provided by my BPT tutor
• Kaplan Integrated Workbook just in case
• Tax tables just in case
• TC ICAEW Question Bank (wasted time)

You may be wondering why I have not mentioned the ICAEW BPT Study Manual . I have not mentioned this because I literally did not look at this at all. In all honesty, I can’t say I have used this for any of the ACA exams as it is way too detailed.

To give you a complete picture of what my open book was like, I have included photos below. You can see how the sticky tabs were used. Remember, these summary notes were sent to me by someone at my firm so you will not recognise these.

For those of you who have joined my journey, I will shortly be sending out a few of the model answers I created and took in to hopefully help you give you some inspiration. If you have not yet joined my journey, join now and you can still get these!

Hopefully you now have a better idea of how to approach studying for the BPT exam and an idea for how you could put together an open book file. Now we need to come onto an extremely important downfall for students sitting BPT, which is timing. This is said to be the most common reason why students fail this exam. Messing up your timing for this exam really does put you in danger as remember, the easy marks are at the initial parts of the question. You therefore need to get there to get these!

As if BPT isn’t complicated enough, you also have to allocate the marks for the exam yourself. You only get told the total marks for the three BPT exam questions, even though these breakdown into much smaller parts. A good idea would therefore be to plan your timing . Take no more than a couple of minutes to allocate marks between each sub-question. As there are 1.5 minutes per mark in this exam, you can calculate how much time you should be spending on each question. See below:

You will not always get this spot on but practising does help you get better at this. Looking carefully at the wording can help here. “Explain with calculations” is of course going to rack up more marks than “describe”. Additionally, you should know the ethics marks will be a maximum of 10% , usually 7 marks, so do not allocate too much time here.

I cannot stress how important timing is. When I first started this exam, it was as if my hands had froze up and I could not type as quickly as I usually could. Given it was already a time pressured exam, this really was not ideal at all. Therefore, by being strict with timing and moving onto the next question when needed really did help me get through.

That’s a wrap – I again would like to state that this blog outlines what worked for me . Hopefully this blog has helped give you an insight into the BPT exam, an idea for how to approach the exam as well as preparing the open book file. It is by no means the “right way”.

Additionally, please do not be alarmed or overwhelmed by how much preparation I did. I have always had the mentality that I need to get through every ICAEW Question Bank for most of the ACA exams. This was my attitude for BPT and is what I did. In all honestly, I probably did not need to put in as much work to pass BPT but I aimed to do as well as I could.

Remember, there is a reason most students rank this as the “hardest ACA exam”. Do not be hard on yourself if you do struggle as most students do. If you need any help or further support from other students, feel free to join this ACA LinkedIn group . You can also post your thoughts and comments below.

21 comments

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Hey, so i am sitting BPT with BST in 3weeks time (roughly have 3weeks of leave (study+annual leave from Monday). I am planning on smashing out around 80% of the QB out (that is 80% of the 59 questions on the QB) and do it roughly 3times – so do each questions or alteast attempt to complete each question 3times around (I follow the same advice I was given for certificates level exams where our tutor told us to do the QB for each exam at least twice. I just do it more 1round for my own self-assurance).

As a BPT is such a skill-based exam (so, like not similar to FAR or FM where the format of the question would be pretty similar but you just need to do know the technical knowledge), do you think its better to do 3rounds but only complete around 80% of the paper or try and do every single ques on the QB?

Also for BST, how many question did you actually attempt to complete or would advice any one sitting it with BPT to complete?

Side note: Your blog is very nice to read as the experience you have wrote about is very similar to what i currently experiences. Would love to know/read more of your experience of how you find working at the BIG4 as an AM and before, as a senior (I am going to be a senior at the Big4 in Sept and contemplating on whether its really worth sticking to Audit and move up the chain or switch to something else).

The first thing I would say on this is that doing the QB three times for Professional Level, especially BPT is likely to be more counter-productive. With Certificate Level, this advice is much more appropriate given how short the questions are and how quickly you can get through them. Professional Level exams require much more time to get through each questions. For example, for BPT to get through even a shorter question could still take up to two hours to practice, mark and debrief. You also need to factor in the time to really build on your open book file from this.

I would therefore definitely not advise trying to go through the QB three times for this. This will avoid: 1) burnout 2) ineffectiveness

Getting through the QB for Professional Level, including BPT is enough to do once. As long as you really do take the time to go through the answers and build the skills you need to do well in this exam. As mentioned, you also need to take the time to build in model answers from the QB into your open book file. The issue of repeating questions in BPT is that you may remember what taxes were relevant to the question because you have seen it before rather than actually knowing how to pull out the relevant taxes if it was an unseen question.

In terms of completing the paper, BPT is extremely time pressured. However, the easy marks are at the start of each question as you can get the marks for stating the basics of the relevant taxes you can pick out. I would always recommend for BPT to try to get through the whole paper instead of 80%. This is so rather than wasting time on the harder marks and missing those easier you can pick these all up.

For BST I found I was quite good at based on the progress test and mock exams I sat. I was already achieving 70+ so I felt quite confident for this one. For that reason, I did not do too much extra practice. I will be releasing a blog on this next Thursday but I probably spent one weekend going through and reading up on answers. Where I did practice was with the number analysis type questions as I found I could definitely improve on that and it would be beneficial to the exam.

I will definitely consider writing a blog on this! One thing I will say is that with audit you will continue to learn and grow. It is definitely a great starting point. Assess it each month or year and see where it goes or if you feel you are ready to move on.

All the best!

Thank you for the quick reply and detailed advice – very much appreciated. I guess I will switch my revision plan around to try and complete all the questions on the QB (never done that before but first time for everything) rather than only doing the majority of the ques but 2x/3x. I have actually bought an open book (BPT) notes online (from this site called ACAMasters) – so sorted for that but never thought of putting model answers from the QB into them – so that’s a great little tip!! Thank you again and I look forward to reading your future blogs!

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Hi Jag! Thanks for the post. I’m about to retake this exam and I wondered if you had any pointers on know which points are relevant and which aren’t? I sat a marked mocked yesterday and found a lot of the points I was making were not earning any marks. Any tips would be useful! Thanks in advance

No worries at all!

BPT can honestly be so difficult to pick out what is relevant and what is not but I really do think it comes with practice.

I think what could help in your situation is perhaps to thoroughly go through the same question again with the mark scheme and see what parts of the question/scenario triggered each part of the answer. It would also help by debriefing the other way to see why your points that gained no marks were not relevant as you may find there could be rules you are missing causing the tax not to be relevant in the given scenario. If you really take the time to go through this hopefully things start to click and fall into place.

As you are perhaps short of time with the exam being next week, I would recommend asking your tutor (assuming you have a training provider) to help explain why. Hopefully it is just small tweaks of knowledge to get you in the right direction.

I would also suggest trying a few new questions and doing answer plans to see if you start to spot key things that come up and help identify relevant taxes although there are so many.

All the best with your exam next week and fingers crossed for you!

Thank you so much for your advice Jag! I kept this in mind as I just sat the exam. Fingers crossed it went well! Thanks once again

No worries at all Faith – I hope the outcome is positive for you 🤞🤞

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Thank you Jag for all the tips! This has been very helpful. I am in the process of preparing for BPT, which I am sitting in December. Would you say BPT is more challenging than SBM, CR and Case Study? Just wondering what to expect next year.

No worries and good luck for BPT in December!

If you have seen my difficulty ranking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpKai9bELj0 I go into some detail about this where I did actually find CR to be more difficult than BPT. CR I found to be the hardest ACA exam and then BPT second. This is because with the BPT content, after a lot of question practice once you grasp the content the main difficulty comes with timing. However, with CR there is SO much content that can actually be very difficult to apply that the exam I felt did really increase in difficulty.

In this video I talk about why I almost failed CR which may be of interest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu6bXPKUFGE . I think had my exam not have been so difficult, I would not have felt this way but because of the exam I had, I really did experience how difficult it can be.

I hope this helps!

Tried to contact you via email, it would be super helpful if we could organise a chat!

Hi Tej, I have just emailed you!

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ICAEW Business planning & Taxation

The ICAEW Business Planning: Taxation (BPT) exam focuses on the importance of taxation knowledge in business planning within a professional context. This includes a thorough grasp of tax strategies, applying tax laws to business scenarios, evaluating tax implications for business decisions, and understanding the key role of taxation in strategic business planning and financial management.

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At MPES, we provide the opportunity to take up to two exams each quarter, specifically during the months of June, September, and December. We advise enrolling in one or two exams per session to finish the professional level within one to two years.

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ICAEW - Business Planning Taxation - Revision Notes

Subject: Business and finance

Age range: 16+

Resource type: Assessment and revision

Last updated

9 September 2023

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Business Planning: Banking (ACA Professional Level) open book notes

Business Planning: Banking (ACA Professional Level) open book notes. 2021 written 93 page notes will help you pass the BPB exam with ease. These are the only resources you need.

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Business Planning: Banking (ACA Professional Level) open book notes.

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