CAP 2 Exams 2011 Feedback

KingEnda

Good luck to everone starting the exams next Monday. Last few days of sweating ahead of us over the weekend, stay going for the last gallop:)

ferike1

Wonder how many questions will be ripped off from the CPA papers this year

QueenV

ferike1 wrote: »

Wonder how many questions will be ripped off from the CPA papers this year

That prob wont be happening this year as the examiner for FR and CPA Prof 2 in the previous years is no longer the examiner for CAP 2 FR after the Fiasco last year!

The new examiner set the papers for Autumn 2010

Username2011

Eh....tuesday?

ferike1

Damn straight he was fired!

However the ineptitude and altogether shall we say poor quality of the institute mean that nothing would surprise me

Hence why I am studying from ACCA notes

tumbling_dice

There was a new examiner for the autumn? Cool. Is it just me or was the Financial Reporting paper in the autumn way easier than the summer version?

Fingers crossed for a similar standard next week.

QueenV

Most of the autumn papers for CAP 2 are fairly decent compared to summer sittings

DonnaDarko09

QueenV wrote: »

Most of the autumn papers for CAP 2 are fairly decent compared to summer sittings

Good to know...

R0N BURGUNDY

Is ciaran connolly not the belfast FR lecturer now though?

KingEnda

R0N BURGUNDY wrote: »

Is ciaran connolly not the belfast FR lecturer now though?

Thats unbelievable, CA can kiss and make up with an examiner who acts offside but they are trying to put the Chartered Grind School out of business through cheap Griffith College courses cause they fell out with the Institute.
The Institute would be best served (as would we the students) if they took Dave O'Donoghue and Liam Doran back as lecturers, save us having to pay extra for their tuition if they were back in the fold:rolleyes:

louise1985

KingEnda wrote: »

Thats unbelievable, CA can kiss and make up with an examiner who acts offside but they are trying to put the Chartered Grind School out of business through cheap Griffith College courses cause they fell out with the Institute.
The Institute would be best served (as would we the students) if they took Dave O'Donoghue and Liam Doran back as lecturers, save us having to pay extra for their tuition if they were back in the fold:rolleyes:

Well said Enda, I feel my employer would have been better off paying the Chartered Grind school for me and not bothering paying the institute for the lectures. The only good lecture in my opinion is Richie Hoare who lectures in Galway. Its unfair we have to shell out for grinds cause they are employing awful lectures considering the standard that they wish to maintain they would want to look at seriously changing lecturers!!

Username2011

well....how did everyone find tax?

aka accounts 2010

Tough but fair if you managed to remember everything. Otherwise it could cause big problems, ie Retirement Relief. Pretty long aswell..How did everyone get on?

tomfoolery60

Very little Corporation Tax I thought. A little unfair I thought. But it was ok. I certainly messed up some of the CGT and CAT reliefs in question 1 but think the rest was ok. Here's hoping...

Username2011

tomfoolery60 wrote: »

Very little Corporation Tax I thought. A little unfair I thought. But it was ok. I certainly messed up some of the CGT and CAT reliefs in question 1 but think the rest was ok. Here's hoping...

Yeah it was a bit surprising that there wasnt more CT. A choice question 4 really was all. Suited me down to the ground. If that q4 had been q1 id have been shmozzled! As it was, I got to more or less skip CT

aka accounts 2010

tomfoolery60 wrote: »

Very little Corporation Tax I thought. A little unfair I thought. But it was ok. I certainly messed up some of the CGT and CAT reliefs in question 1 but think the rest was ok. Here's hoping...

Ya I agree, I was hoping for more corporation tax really. I also messed up some reliefs in question 1. Out of the way now at least, 3 to go..

Username2011

aka accounts 2010 wrote: »

Ya I agree, I was hoping for more corporation tax really. I also messed up some reliefs in question 1. Out of the way now at least, 3 to go..

tiredness already kicking in! how im going to be able to face SFMA and FR at the end of the week, I've no idea! Cheers to the institute for not giving us a break inbetween

tomfoolery60

Username2011 wrote: »

tiredness already kicking in! how im going to be able to face SFMA and FR at the end of the week, I've no idea! Cheers to the institute for not giving us a break inbetween

They are sound like that!

aka accounts 2010

Username2011 wrote: »

tiredness already kicking in! how im going to be able to face SFMA and FR at the end of the week, I've no idea! Cheers to the institute for not giving us a break inbetween

Exactly, no break is crazy. Having four exams back to back is tough going. Even one day would make a big difference. I need 1 or 2 hours sleep before I can have a look at auditing. sfma and fr have the possibility of being disasters!!!!:(

JohnnyCarmello

I assume the reason there's no break is that they'd have to rent out the RDS for an additional day, and they don't want to part with their money for it.

Username2011

aka accounts 2010 wrote: »

Exactly, no break is crazy. Having four exams back to back is tough going. Even one day would make a big difference. I need 1 or 2 hours sleep before I can have a look at auditing. sfma and fr have the possibility of being disasters!!!!:(

still though. we're a site luckier than the folk last year.
i wouldnt be able to think come thurs night, never mind learn all that tax i crammed into my head yesterday.
And i found that 20 mins at the start today unreal. I had my paper finished at 1pm with 20mins time to go back to the questions i had found difficult.

tumbling_dice

Yeah the 20 minutes was great. I was disappointed there wasn't more CT. Question 1 had me in a knot about an hour in but I left it then, was able to do the rest of the paper by 20 past 12 so I went back to the start and tried again. Kept it simple, hopefully if I have the basics of the reliefs right I'll have enough in the rest of the paper to get it. 20% CT... Not what I wanted!

QueenV

It was a fair exam in the end, it's just a shame that the was barely any CT as I spent a fairly good bit of time considering it was meant to be weighted a lot more than the others.Was a bit surprised it was more like a CAT/CGT paper

Tricky1979

What's your evening plans to revise for Auditing Exam?

I think I'm just going to go over lecture notes to get my auditing hat on and flick through a few papers....

aka accounts 2010

Tricky1979 wrote: »

What's your evening plans to revise for Auditing Exam?

I think I'm just going to go over lecture notes to get my auditing hat on and flick through a few papers....

Ya I'll do something similar. Just going to get my file in order and glance through a couple questions. Nothing to major really. Want to keep the mind somewhat fresh if that's possible. Plan on relaxing a bit and an early night.

SL10

Hey guys,

I would recommend having a read through the examiners reports this eve before the exams tomorrow if you have time. They aren't too taxing and really help get you into the mind of auditing and the mind of the examiner. Thats what i did last year and found them really helpful. Things the examiners say were answered poorly are likely to come up in some way or another again until they are answered sufficiently.

Congrats on finishing tax btw and best of luck with the rest of them- 1/4 of the way there

ted2767

louise1985 wrote: »

Well said Enda, I feel my employer would have been better off paying the Chartered Grind school for me and not bothering paying the institute for the lectures. The only good lecture in my opinion is Richie Hoare who lectures in Galway. Its unfair we have to shell out for grinds cause they are employing awful lectures considering the standard that they wish to maintain they would want to look at seriously changing lecturers!!

I couldn't agree more with you about Richie Hoare. I just finished an undergrad in Galway and we were lucky enough to have Richie for 3 years an absolute legend and a very nice guy also.

louise1985

ted2767 wrote: »

I couldn't agree more with you about Richie Hoare. I just finished an undergrad in Galway and we were lucky enough to have Richie for 3 years an absolute legend and a very nice guy also.

Ya he is unreal, he done out a full mock question for variance for me cause the solution the chartered had put up was incorrect!! could do with him teaching more chartered subjects.

thisguy

I thought tax was alright today, was very surprised with how little corporation tax there was though...I didnt do question 4 so only did one question dealing with corp tax, which considering the amount of time i spent on it seems like a waste!...overall happy enough, hoping audit goes well tomorrow before the hard ones begin thursday!

Pawwed Rig

louise1985 wrote: »

Ya he is unreal, he done out a full mock question for variance for me cause the solution the chartered had put up was incorrect!! could do with him teaching more chartered subjects.

Plus 1 for Richie. Maybe we should start a new thread:D

BESman

Jaysus, don't know what to make of Tax. There was nothing overly difficult but think I made a balls of a lot of the reliefs. Be interesting to see how they mark it. I'd have a lot of the basic rules and computations for most of the questions but would have mistakes all over the place too.

For CGT in Q1 I went off calculating deferred gain which I dont think applies at all. Didn't know what to say about the share buybacks, skipped that part of the course last night. As for tax relief on the patent, I spewed shite about intangible assets and R & D reliefs. Didn't mention the obvious point about capital allowances. Out of 44 marks be very lucky to get 20.

Q2 was fair, only got stumped on part (d) about the group companies and tax efficient way to dispose of property. I skipped it and when I got back to it at the end just said to transfer it to a company with capital losses. Any marks for that I wonder?!

Q3 was probably the most do-able. There was very little calculations for the agricultural relief and I expected something to catch me out but there didn't seem to be anything really.

Skipped Q4, didn't cover loss relief.

Q5 was poor but I had no choice but to answer it. I didn't refer to the various rules on directors' loans, just made general statements about each of the transactions, i.e. allowable or not and why. I also tried my best to describe how the individual should account for each transaction. Be lucky to get 5 marks in this!

I've been trying to calculate my overall mark and its anywhere between 35 and 50. I think a pass is probably beyond me though. I kind of neglected Tax because it wouldn't be the worst one to repeat in October.

Now to Auditing on 36 hours without sleep...

Username2011

BESman wrote: »

Jaysus, don't know what to make of Tax. There was nothing overly difficult but think I made a balls of a lot of the reliefs. Be interesting to see how they mark it. I'd have a lot of the basic rules and computations for most of the questions but would have mistakes all over the place too.

For CGT in Q1 I went off calculating deferred gain which I dont think applies at all. Didn't know what to say about the share buybacks, skipped that part of the course last night. As for tax relief on the patent, I spewed shite about intangible assets and R & D reliefs. Didn't mention the obvious point about capital allowances. Out of 44 marks be very lucky to get 20.

Q2 was fair, only got stumped on part (d) about the group companies and tax efficient way to dispose of property. I skipped it and when I got back to it at the end just said to transfer it to a company with capital losses. Any marks for that I wonder?!

Q3 was probably the most do-able. There was very little calculations for the agricultural relief and I expected something to catch me out but there didn't seem to be anything really.

Skipped Q4, didn't cover loss relief.

Q5 was poor but I had no choice but to answer it. I didn't refer to the various rules on directors' loans, just made general statements about each of the transactions, i.e. allowable or not and why. I also tried my best to describe how the individual should account for each transaction. Be lucky to get 5 marks in this!

I've been trying to calculate my overall mark and its anywhere between 35 and 50. I think a pass is probably beyond me though. I kind of neglected Tax because it wouldn't be the worst one to repeat in October.

Now to Auditing on 36 hours without sleep...

My guy failed the 80% test and didn't qualify for agri relief so gave him business relief instead.....

Pawwed Rig

BESman wrote: »

Q2 was fair, only got stumped on part (d) about the group companies and tax efficient way to dispose of property. I skipped it and when I got back to it at the end just said to transfer it to a company with capital losses. Any marks for that I wonder?!

Was there an error in Q2 part D? I took AGA as having three subsidiaries but after reading in again It could be interpreted as CGC being a parent of DGD. Which really changes the conditions for the CG group. Thoughts?

Username2011

yep i think youre right
i think they meant to say 80% subsidary of the other company

all the companies said "x% subsidary of AGA" except the last one that said "x% subsidary"


I threw down an assumption

KingEnda

One down, a load of Tax stuff now to dump from the brain. Hoping for a bit more CT to be included on the paper but I think I will be there or there abouts

Now for the Audit and then .....................


:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

Username2011

Shtumped! Don't know how I did with that audit paper...

Tricky1979

Very tough paper - more like a Financial Reporting / Double Accounting exam.

Don't think any of the wasted hours in lectures helped today.

No sign of internal controls? Lectures and examiners and in turn students are on completely different planets.

There's always October - €€€€€€€ for Chartered Accountants!!

R0N BURGUNDY

thought i was doing sweet until had to decide between question 3 and 4 and ended up changing my mind half way through 4 and doing 3 instead. hope first 2 questions will put me over the edge because on 3 id say i got about 5 marks.

thought question 1 and 2 were dead on. question 3 tricky. 4 - blank.

prinz

Yup bit of an odd paper. Wasn't too bad, but I was caught for time by about 5 minutes or so. Were a few sections which were more Fin Rep than Audit & Assurance esp. sections in Q1.

Didn't really get the "substantive analytical procedures", should it not be subtantive procedures and/or analytical procedures? What's a substantive analytical procedure? Ended up just doing a quick numerical calc for that part.

Q2 on the Bank Confirmation piece.... was there supposed to be two separate bank accounts? Why would the bank statement of one account include an overdraft figure from a second account? If they are relating to one account why would the bank confirmation letter deduct one account from the balance of another... is there something I missed on that.... The same piece seems to indicate that there is one account... and two accounts...

QueenV

Section A was okish

Section B -OMG

The audit report question was ridiculous!!!!!!!!!I mean WTF was that?????

After the disaster that was the continuous assessment,I really hope I have done enough to pass! Fingers crossed

R0N BURGUNDY

haha - the audit report question was a bit mad alright. i messed up the depreciation of the buildings and then didnt have time to amend it when i realised later what was meant to happen.

toobeyshaw

I thought Q 1 was fair enough, I did question 2 and then 4 which were mixed. I was a bit crap on time at the end despite my best efforts so I messed up Q4!! Glad it's out of the way, I am not going to analyse it now because I just never know what to expect with audit

For SFMA tomorrow I am just going to read through notes this evening and try get a good nights sleep and hope for the best.

For FR on Friday I think I could spend a year studying for it and still not have a clue :eek:. Roll on Friday at 1.20

thisguy

prinz wrote: »

Yup bit of an odd paper. Wasn't too bad, but I was caught for time by about 5 minutes or so. Were a few sections which were more Fin Rep than Audit & Assurance esp. sections in Q1.

Didn't really get the "substantive analytical procedures", should it not be subtantive procedures and/or analytical procedures? What's a substantive analytical procedure? Ended up just doing a quick numerical calc for that part.

Yea for that all i did was a depreciation recalc, and compared it to the actual result...and then said some ****e about comparing year on year as well.

Not to sure about that paper, its so hard to tell with auditing but I'm not overly confident after it

Username2011

For Q1: how were you supposed to do the depreciation on the disposal??
i figured out the additions, and other fixed assets ok but for the disposal i was a bit stumped so just reveresd the accumulated depreciation (i think thats what I did) by deducting cost -nrv?

Prinz - I didn't figure out the FX forward contract account but the other overdraft a/c (i think) was linking it to disclosing directors loans which is required by the Companies act


Ron: Did you figure out the depreciation in the audit report? I was stumped and said something along the lines of they should revalue it to year end and then revise the uesful expected life

As well.....the bank question. Turns out bank ISNT always the nicest area! or is that me?


You guys are right about the time. I got it done but only cause I was ruthless on moving on. Don't know how people last year did without the 20 mins

prinz

Username2011 wrote: »

For Q1: how were you supposed to do the depreciation on the disposal??
i figured out the additions, and other fixed assets ok but for the disposal i was a bit stumped so just reveresd the accumulated depreciation (i think thats what I did) by deducting cost -nrv?

You didn't have to. There was no depreciation charged in the year of disposal. All you needed to do was a quick calc of what the depreciation charge was approx and compare it to the actual charge per in the IS which was €130,000. There was a big enough difference to say the €130,000 charge was not reasonable and needed further investigating. That's all I did. Maybe picked it up wrong.

Username2011

prinz wrote: »

You didn't have to. There was no depreciation charged in the year of disposal. All you needed to do was a quick calc of what the depreciation charge was approx and compare it to the actual charge per in the IS which was €130,000. There was a big enough difference to say the €130,000 charge was not reasonable and needed further investigating. That's all I did. Maybe picked it up wrong.

Ah as with all the audit answers, seems so simple when you read it back. Thanks for that!

BESman

R0N BURGUNDY wrote: »

thought i was doing sweet until had to decide between question 3 and 4 and ended up changing my mind half way through 4 and doing 3 instead. hope first 2 questions will put me over the edge because on 3 id say i got about 5 marks.

thought question 1 and 2 were dead on. question 3 tricky. 4 - blank.

Same thing happened to me. After the case study (which was ok to be fair) I attempted Q3 because it looked similar to some questions I had with me but when I got into it, it was a complete disaster, didn't know what I was doing. Time was pushing on so I only attempted part (a) and went onto Q4 which I belted out as quick as I could. God help the examiner trying to read that. Didn't have time to go back to Q3 so I've pretty much foregone 25 marks there. Hopefully between the continuous assessment (which I did alright in considering the poor marks overall) and a good Q1 & Q4 I might get over the line.

Whiplash85

What are people thinking with regard to sfma tomorrow?

R0N BURGUNDY

if sales variances come up, i will cry. for some reason i always mess them up. no doubt they will defo come up.

Whiplash85

Having major headaches with them myself.they'll probably throw in a sales mix as well along with market share.might be best just to avoid them because it's either 0 out of 20 or 16/17 out of 20 with them.if you are forced to do them leave it until last.you can seriously get bogged down on them.

louise1985

I hope variances come up of they dont Im screwed!! more computational and less theory is what Im hoping for!!!