AITI - The mother of all qualifications

Bren1609

With more and more accountants not content with being "merely" an accountant many are continuing with a further 2/3 years tax exams. There is also an increasing amount of graduates going straight into tax exams and by-passing accountancy altogether.

Also, AITI members will earn substantially more money than accountants. After all, nobody thanks you for doing a good audit or good set of accounts.
However they will thank you for slashing their tax bill.

Is it then fair to say that this is the most prestigious of all the qualifications i.e.ACA,CPA etc?

Back to a previous debate, CIMA receives the least amount of exemptions from AITI exams. Does this confirm that CIMA are at the bottom of the pecking order?

Kinetic^

I'd be inclined to do both ACA/ACCA and AITI, which means your a super duper auditor/tax man............freaky!!

I'm defo going to consider starting the the tax exams after my ACA.

karangka

Back to a previous debate, CIMA receives the least amount of exemptions from AITI exams. Does this confirm that CIMA are at the bottom of the pecking order?

I don't think so. CIMA is a management accounting qualification and ACA, ACCA, & CPA more towards financial accounting. As AITI is a taxation qualification (financial) ACA, ACCA, & CPA get more exemptions as their papers mostly are financial accounting related.

Bren1609

I don't think CIMA even has tax on it's syllabus anymore. Shouldn't management accountants have some knowledge of tax?? After all, every company/industry has to pay or comply with tax regulations. If your a mgt accountant working in a construction firm (for example), your B/S is going to have VAT, PAYE, RCT & CT. What does a mgt accountant do in that scenario considering that CIMA has no tax on it' syllabus anymore? Are they in a position to say that they are qualified to produce a set of financial statements?

Oafley Jones

Bren1609 wrote:

With more and more accountants not content with being "merely" an accountant many are continuing with a further 2/3 years tax exams. There is also an increasing amount of graduates going straight into tax exams and by-passing accountancy altogether.

Also, AITI members will earn substantially more money than accountants. After all, nobody thanks you for doing a good audit or good set of accounts.
However they will thank you for slashing their tax bill.

Is it then fair to say that this is the most prestigious of all the qualifications i.e.ACA,CPA etc?

Back to a previous debate, CIMA receives the least amount of exemptions from AITI exams. Does this confirm that CIMA are at the bottom of the pecking order?

Out of curiousty, how much can they expect to earn?

JCB

Bren1609 wrote:

Shouldn't management accountants have some knowledge of tax??

They would have some knowledge of accounting for tax under the financial accounting subjects they do in CIMA.

If your a mgt accountant working in a construction firm (for example), your B/S is going to have VAT, PAYE, RCT & CT. What does a mgt accountant do in that scenario considering that CIMA has no tax on it' syllabus anymore?

Again that really isn't the job of a management accountant, any tax related estimates.... would be done by the financial accountant/tax advisor

Are they in a position to say that they are qualified to produce a set of financial statements?

Of course, they do budgeted financial statements so yes they know how to do them but it's not really their job to draft accounts for CRO requirements.


In relation to CIMA being bottom of the pecking order, tax and management accounting aren't exactly inexplicably linked. Since CIMA do less financial accounting and little tax well of course they won't get the same exemptions.

Pretend CIMA was the top in your book, how many exemptions would AITI get? Not many I would guess. It's like doing financial accounting to get exemptions from actuary.

smcgiff

Bren1609 wrote:

Is it then fair to say that this is the most prestigious of all the qualifications i.e.ACA,CPA etc?

How could it when very few people know about it and most, if pushed to guess, would say it was an accounting technician qualification.

Even if it's better paid I can't think of a more tedious job outside dentistry or law.

If I were to take up more study it would be an MBA. Most accountant's provide tax advice anyway.

My next step is to get a practicing Certificate - And there's practically no study needed for that.

shamblertine

Bren1609 wrote:

I don't think CIMA even has tax on it's syllabus anymore. Shouldn't management accountants have some knowledge of tax??

They do have tax on their syllabus, also most people joining a professional accountancy body will have an accountancy degree which will normally include 2 or 3 modules on tax.

Bren1609

Anywho, I think were moving to far away from the point. Has anyone here actually sat the AITI exams? Recruitment webistes are quoting between 70-90K with 3 years PQE.