Oof. The R03 exam. Personal Taxation. This is one of the exams where a lot of students come unstuck in the journey to their diploma. Alongside R04 (Pensions & Retirement Planning), it is one of the hardest to pass – the pass rate for both exams was only 57% in 2021, down from 65% and 61% respectively in 2020. But don’t let that faze you before you even start to revise!The main issues with R03 are:
The main recommendation we can give to help overcome the taxing challenge is practice. Using past papers, repeating calculations, asking questions in a study group is the best way to prepared when you sit the exam for real. You don’t want to go in there and panic that you are sitting the wrong exam because you don’t recognise the style of question or know how many responses you need to give. As you get closer to the exam date, we suggest doing practice questions in a very tight time period – for example 10 questions in 12 minutes or fewer is about the right speed for the real exam. You’ll have just over a minute per question, so you need to understand which questions you will need to take longer over, and which you feel more confident in. You need to be able to calculate income tax for different bands in your sleep!The more practice you can do the better – but can we stress this should be relevant practice. Make sure you are using official past papers to become familiar with the way that the CII phrase questions and the type of responses they are looking for. Attend revision workshops if you can so that you can discuss specific examples and bring the study guide to life. Not everyone can remember facts just by highlighting and using flash cards.R03 doesn’t have to tax your brain. Find out what type of revision works for you, use the best study materials you can, rope in a work buddy or two and practice!Need some extra support? Check out our workshops.
