Your exam paper

Read this guidance about your ADIT exam paper before you sit your exam.

What's included in the exam paper?

Each ADIT exam paper includes a set number of questions, of which you will be expected to answer a specified number within the available exam time. ADIT exams typically include a mixture of scenario- and essay-based questions, some of which may be divided into multiple sub-questions.

In addition to the exam questions, some exam papers will include supplementary texts such as relevant tax tables or treaty extracts. This content may be relevant to one or more questions, and you will be able to refer to it throughout your exam.

You can download past exam papers for each ADIT module, and a recent past paper for each module will be available for you to practice with in Exam4 ahead of exam day.

Can I refer to other sources?

All ADIT exams have a closed-book policy, meaning that only the permitted books are allowed during the exam. You will not be able to access sources beyond the supplementary and permitted books in your exam; doing so will violate the exam rules.

You may, however, mention or cite relevant case law or other sources that you have studied and revised in support of the points you are making in your answers – indeed, this may even be expected, depending on the nature of the question! You should always attribute the content which you cite to its source rather than trying to pass it off as your own opinion or work.

You will not be expected to provide detailed citations – just the general name of the author, legal case or piece of legislation you are referring to. For example:

“As Rohatgi points out, exit taxes may result in double taxation if the new and former residence states differ in their valuation of the asset…”
“In the Apple case, Ireland was initially found to have granted illegal state aid…”
“As the OECD’s BEPS Final Report makes clear, the digital economy is increasingly indistinguishable from the economy itself and therefore cannot be taxed separately.”

You will not receive marks simply for reciting verbatim from external sources, but you may be awarded marks if you apply relevant points and concepts from those sources to the specific context of your answers.

How do I time my exam?

On exam day, you will be expected to start your exam within 15 minutes following your scheduled exam start time, so you will need to make sure you launch Exam4 in good time to complete your pre-exam setup and ID verification.

You will have a 15-minute window, beginning at your scheduled exam start time, to open your question paper in Exam4 and start your exam. Your exam time begins when you open your question paper.

You will be managing your own exam timing, so you must end your exam no later than 3 hours and 15 minutes after opening your question paper. You should aim to finish typing when you have 2 minutes left. The exam will not end automatically in Exam4, so you are responsible for ending it at the correct time.

There is no separate reading time in ADIT exams, so you will be able to start typing your answers as soon as the exam begins. However, we encourage you to set aside some time to thoroughly read each question and plan each of your answers.

The time you spend answering questions should correspond broadly to the number of marks available for that question. For example, if it's a 25-mark question, you should aim to spend approximately a quarter of your time answering the question.

To help you manage your timekeeping, we recommend setting personal alarms on an alarm clock or watch.

How many questions should I attempt?

You will need to answer a total of four questions in the Principles of International Taxation exam, and a total of five questions in any other ADIT exam.

Each exam consists of two or three parts, and the number of questions within each part will vary. You can find full details for your chosen exam below, so make sure to check how many questions you should attempt in each part of the exam, ahead of exam day.

Please note: the number of Part B questions in the China, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Malta, Singapore, United States and EU VAT exams taking place in 2023 has changed from previous years. Part B will now consist of two 20-mark questions, of which you will be required to answer one.

If you attempt more than the prescribed number of questions in your exam, all of your answers will be marked and the highest scoring combination of answers that fulfils the exam requirement will make up your overall mark. However, as this means some of your answers will not be included in your mark, it is a very inefficient way of sitting the exam! For this reason we strongly advise you to stick to the prescribed number of questions, to avoid spending time writing answers that will not be included in your overall mark and ensure that none of your exam time is wasted.

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Principles of International Taxation

This exam is held in the June and December exam sessions.

The exam paper consists of two parts:

Part A consists of five essay-type questions worth 25 marks each.
Part B consists of two scenario-type questions worth 25 marks each.

You are required to answer four questions in total, including at least one question from each part.