How to pass ICAN Taxation
Skills level. The syllabus has 5 areas and they are not worth the same — 75% of the marks sit in just three of them. Knowing which three changes what you do tonight.
Start here, in this order
- 1
Companies Income Tax 30% of the paper
Taxation of non-specialised businesses · Taxation of specialised businesses
- 2
Personal Income Tax 25% of the paper
Taxation of employment income · Taxation of trusts, settlements and estates · Taxation of sole proprietorship · Taxation of partners in a partnership business · Taxation of investment income
- 3
Introduction to Taxation, Tax Administration and Ethics 20% of the paper
Introduction to taxation · Tax administration in Nigeria · Role and relationship between fiscal policy, tax legislation and administration · Revised National Tax Policy (NTP), 2017 · Basic ethical issues in taxation · Assessments, objections, appeals and remittances
The remaining 2 areas share 25% between them. Worth knowing. Not worth the weeks that the three above deserve. Full weightings for this paper.
Then write, by hand, against the clock
Taxation is written by hand. Marks are earned by the reasoning — stating the principle, applying it to the scenario, concluding — so an answer that jumps to the figure loses most of them even when the figure is right. Practise full answers on paper, timed at roughly 1.8 minutes per mark.
The part nobody does
Almost every candidate writes practice answers. Almost none of them ever find out whether those answers would have scored. You write, you feel it went reasonably, you move on — and the first real feedback you receive is the result, months later, when the diet is gone.
That gap is the whole reason preparation fails for people who worked hard. Not knowledge. Feedback.
What Edentos does about it
- The whole study text, in the order the marks are in.
- The official study text condensed and reorganised by examinable weighting, with every claim cited back to the page it came from — so you can check anything you doubt in one click.
- Find out now. Not when the results come out.
- Write by hand, photograph it, and have it marked against the examiner's own marking guide — with the marks broken down the way the examiner breaks them down, and the reason for each one.
- Revise where the marks are, not where the pages are.
- Every syllabus topic, ordered by the share of marks it carries, so your revision time follows the marks instead of the page count.
- A right answer with no workings is a wrong mark.
- The Institute's published solution beside your attempt, with the mark allocation visible — so you can see the marks sitting in the principle and the application, not only the final figure.
- The exam is handwritten. Your practice should be too.
- Timed mocks written on paper, under exam conditions, so you discover how long handwriting takes before it costs you a question.