ICAEW and CIOT Offer Fast Track To Joint Membership

The ICAEW and CIOT have announced a fast track scheme to joint membership of the two professional bodies, that will enable successful students to join both bodies within three to four years (faster than using the traditional route of ICAEW first then CIOT).

The programme includes a new paper "Taxation of Major Corporates" which, given today's PAC report on HMRC and the ongoing media frenzy over multinational tax avoidance, is clearly relevant to those with a penchant for tax.

Here is the full text of the announcement:

The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) and the Chartered Institute of Taxation (CIOT) have launched a Joint Programme enabling students to simultaneously achieve two prestigious qualifications – the ICAEW chartered accountancy qualification, the ACA, and the Chartered Tax Adviser qualification, the CTA.
 
Those students who successfully complete this route, which is likely to take three to four years, will be eligible to apply for membership of both ICAEW and CIOT – providing they have undertaken relevant professional work in tax and accountancy during their studies. This could be quicker than if they had followed the traditional path of training to become a CTA after qualifying as an ICAEW Chartered Accountant.

Within the Joint Programme there will be separate routes to qualification for those specialising in direct and indirect taxation.

Mark Spofforth, ICAEW President said:
“The Joint Programme is designed for the most dynamic and talented corporate tax professionals who are ambitious to rise quickly to the senior levels of the profession.

“Under this new programme, students complete all the requirements for the ACA and CTA in a way which considerably reduces the study overlap, time out of the office, and tuition costs.

“It still enables the employer to be confident that the student has gained the relevant skill set required for an accountant ready to advise on tax at the highest level. The combination of two well respected and high quality programmes will help employers offer their employees a more efficient route to become tax specialists.”

Patrick Stevens, CIOT President said:
“The CIOT and ICAEW have worked closely with professional services firms to create this flexible new programme for those specialising in tax. It has been designed for students dealing with the tax affairs of FTSE 350 companies or other large corporates from the start of their training. It also has a route suitable for those specialising in indirect tax.

“As well as drawing on the existing strengths of the two qualifications it incorporates a new, specially developed paper, Taxation of Major Corporates, which has been developed jointly by ICAEW and CIOT. This paper has a strong practical focus and deals with the kind of corporate transactions that students will find relevant to their employment.”

Paul Morton, Global Head of Tax at Reed Elsevier, added:
“The challenges faced by our department are very demanding so we look for new team members to be highly knowledgeable. We can be sure that a tax professional who has the ACA and CTA qualifications will have all of the technical skills needed to succeed in our team.”

Contacts
CIOT: George Crozier on 020 7340 0569 or 07740 477374 (gcrozier@ciot.org.uk)
ICAEW: Caroline Florence on 020 7920 8564 or 07973 400 264 (caroline.florence@icaew.com)

Notes to editors

1. For links to further information and brochures please go to www.icaew.com/aca-cta or www.tax.org.uk/aca-cta.
2. ICAEW is a professional membership organisation, supporting over 138,000 chartered accountants around the world. Through our technical knowledge, skills and expertise, we provide insight and leadership to the global accountancy and finance profession.Our members provide financial knowledge and guidance based on the highest professional, technical and ethical standards. We develop and support individuals, organisations and communities to help them achieve long-term, sustainable economic value.
   Because of us, people can do business with confidence.
   ICAEW is a founder member of the Global Accounting Alliance, which represents around 785,000 of the world's leading professional accountants in over 165 countries around the globe, to promote quality services, share information and collaborate on important international issues.