Modules and structure

The ATT syllabus is a series of seven free-standing Certificates of Competency, enabling students to gain knowledge in a specialist area of tax without necessarily having to study for the full qualification. Each Certificate of Competency is valid for 3 years and can be renewed upon evidence of CPD.

In order to achieve the ATT qualification, students must pass four of the certificates – in the three core subjects and in one non-core subject of choice.

The certificates

• Core certificate 1 - Personal taxation
• Core certificate 2 - Business and accounting principles
• Non-core certificate 3
  Options
• Business taxation higher skills
• Inheritance tax, trusts and estates
• VAT
• Business compliance
• Core certificate 4 - Practice administration and ethics

Format of certificate papers

Each Certificate paper is three hours in length. The pass mark for each paper is 50%

Questions will not be set which require knowledge of:

• any statute receiving Royal Assent or any statutory instrument made less than five months before the examination date;
• with the exception of Inheritance Tax, any legislation repealed or superseded more than five months before the examination date;
• any case reported less than three months before the examination date.

Questions may be set:

• on prospective legislation passed more than five months before the examination date even if it is not in force;
• on matters which are not specifically listed in the syllabus but which are related to topics within the syllabus (for example, accountancy principles for the computation of business income);
• on matters which require a knowledge of taxes which are not specifically within the syllabus of a particular paper but are within the syllabus as a whole.

Certificate papers are in traditional form with a mixture of computational and written questions and no question choice. The short-form questions carry marks of between two and four marks each and in total account for 40% of the available marks. There will therefore be between 10 and 20 such questions in each paper. The remaining available marks are accounted for by between three and five longer questions carrying from 10 to 20 marks each. Questions requiring a knowledge of law will normally attract between 10% and 15% of the available marks in each of the technical papers (either as an element of questions or as a stand-alone question).

Law is also an integral part of the ATT Certificates. The content of the Law element of each Certificate is set out in the ATT manual entitled "Essential Law for the Taxation Technician"  You are strongly recommended to purchase this book.