Tax Planning is especially important if you are considering a career in taxation. The course allows students to better understand the main taxation issues raised by individuals and businesses and apply taxation principles accordingly.
Students will learn more about the various provisions in the Income Tax Act (ITA) and how they can make use of it to attain tax efficiency, deferral and minimization under individual and corporate taxation. The complex taxation scenarios as discussed during lesson time are a true reflection of situations that tax professionals have to deal with so students will be expected to showcase their analytical, technical and problem solving skills extensively.

Needless to say, students will be familiarized with the ITA in this course. Tax Planning will require you to refer to the ITA frequently and students will have to learn how to interpret the language in the ITA in order to fully understand of the tax provision under the various scenarios.

Under Prof Damien Hong and Jenny Lim, students will be required to do 2 projects – one being individual tax while the other being corporate tax. Tax computations are generally not required in the projects as the projects are centered on scenarios whereby students will be expected to know the particular section of the ITA very well in order to do the project.
You can form groups of up to 6 students for the project. Typical duration required: 1 week as the project question will only be released the week prior to your presentation. Only a 3 page report is required for each project.
While this may seem to be a simple project, you are strongly advised to read up, research extensively for the project topic assigned to your group and know the ITA at your fingertips. Prof Damien Hong and Jenny Lim are tax professionals with extensive industry experience who will not hesitate to openly point out mistakes halfway through your presentation and even come up with adhoc scenarios to test your understanding of the ITA topic you are presenting.
It is alright to take other project intensive modules to complement with Tax Planning as you will only be required to spend 2 weeks of your term time on the project (1 week for individual and corporate tax each).

• One of the favourite topics among year 3 and 4 students: Tax is not for everybody. Either you get it or you don’t.
• Prof Damien Hong will be teaching individual tax while Prof Jenny Lim will be teaching corporate tax. Each of their classes will span over a 6 week period.
• While the tax workshops the professors have arranged for do not require compulsory attendance, it is still strongly advised to go for it because it is a good time to clarify your doubts.
• Students who simply love doing past year can rejoice as exam resources are easily available on the library website all the way back to AY 2006/07. The Tax Planning TA will also be sending out the previous term Tax Planning exam paper to the class 2 weeks prior to the exam for their practice purposes. Furthermore, ACCA papers (with answers provided) under the ‘Advanced Taxation’ module are available under ACCA website!
• Discussing exam papers with friends is better than doing it alone. The qualitative questions in the exam papers requires a lot of input from various sources to be able to see the bigger picture and better understand what the question is actually asking for. However, exasperation starts setting in when you realize each individual has their own point of view in solving the tax situation and the discussion can go on for hours while you are running out of time during your study break

Do not forget your Income Tax content and couple it with practice. As it is an applications based course, you can only apply what you know.

Revise Tax and always do the case studies before class

Internalize and actively participate the cases handed out by Yee Loong. Also, after the lesson, spend some time to read the case and think about the issues again.

Master the ITA

Have a damn good cheat sheetIRAS website is your best friend, not facebook. Make sure you explore it extensively.

Another bible to read here: the Income Tax Act. Take it as your bed time story book and your MUST read it after class time. The moment you can explain the language used in the Income Tax Act in a layman manner and apply it accordingly, you will realize that the Income Tax Act will be your life savior during the exam.

Make sure you take TP within the year after Income Tax, forgetting the basics from Income Tax makes it much harder to catch up from the start.

Your Income Tax knowledge must be strong, and try to read te Act to understand more
Don't procrastinate. Revise your TP regularly as there are 8 quizzes in total during term time. It helps especially when it comes to exam preparations.

Pay attention in class. Expect to copy a lot of notes from what the professors say during lesson time.

Practice, practice, practice. Discuss the past year exam papers with your friends and work as a group.

Keep yourself updated with tax changes in the Singapore budget. It is often discussed during class time especially during the first lesson.