TTPP114: Pass Your CTA Exams by Not Being One of These 10 Types of Students with Nitin Rabheru Artwork

The Tax Professionals Podcast

This podcast helps tax professionals, typically by helping you become a better tax professional, helping you pass the ATT and CTA exams, or helping you decide what you want to do with your tax career.

Episodes are released bi-weekly, released on Mondays, and include a mix of solo and guest episodes.

Jack Bonehill, CTA, hosts the podcast. He's an employment tax specialist, working in the area since 2015, and won Tolley's Taxation's Rising Star award in 2023.

Website: https://www.thetaxprofessionalspodcast.com/

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Tax Skills Masterclasses: https://www.thetaxprofessionalspodcast.com/masterclasses/

Sub Series: Tax Career Success Secrets, sharing the secrets behind tax-career success, and Tax Role Insights, giving you an insider's view into the different available tax roles.

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The Tax Professionals Podcast

TTPP114: Pass Your CTA Exams by Not Being One of These 10 Types of Students with Nitin Rabheru

February 17, 2025 • Jack Bonehill

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There are common reasons why, time and time again, students fail their Chartered Tax Adviser (CTA) exams. To explain these, Nitin and I have created the “10 types of bad CTA students”, and to make it more memorable, we have assigned a name (hopefully fun names) to each one.

In the episode, we talk through each bad type of student to help you identify any bad traits in yourself or you staff, and then we summarise our advice to increase the changes of you or your staff passing.

Show notes: thetaxprofessionalspodcast.com/TTPP114

Subscribe: thetaxprofessionalspodcast.com/subscribe

Take control of your career progression free course: https://documents.thetaxprofessionalspodcast.com/freecourse

You’ll Learn

(4:00) Bad Type of CTA Student #1: The Quirkmeister
(9:00) Bad Type of CTA Student #2: The Negative Nell
(14:30) The Bad Type of CTA Student #3: The Sloth, Lazebag or Deluded
(20:30) Bad Type of CTA Student #4: The One Trick Pony
(24:30) Bad Type of CTA Student #5: The Stickler
(28:30) Bad Type of CTA Student #6: The Mock Master or Drill Sergant
(39:00) Bad Type of CTA Student #7: Blame Thrower
(42:30) Bad Type of CTA Student #8: The Shortcut Seeker
(47:15) Bad Type of CTA Student #9: The Last Minuter
(55:15) Bad Type of CTA Student #10: The Legislation Love

Resources – Other CTA Podcasts:

All other exam-support related podcast episodes: https://www.thetaxprofessionalspodcast.com/category/podcast/att-cta/

Particularly recommend: TTPP96: Why She Failed One CTA Paper Multiple Times but Then Passed and Qualified with Amy Rylance

Free Downloads

FREE – CTA Study Phase Checklist so you can make sure you ‘complete’ the study phase before revision, going into revision as prepared as you can

FREE – ATT/CTA revision folder guide, which was made when the exams became open book. This is somewhat outdated now, but there is still useful information in there

FREE – 8 CTA/ATT revision tips summary, which does exactly what it says on the tin