P26S TAX Strategic Blueprint Test 1(2-Week)

TAX Test 4 Strategic Blueprint — Your six-week plan to 23 September

The foundation of the Test 4 study build. What to focus on, in what order, and how the whole programme fits into the six weeks before the exam.

What it is.

A nine-page strategic document telling you what Test 4 will most likely test, what your earlier assessments have already taken off the table, and how to spend the six weeks to the exam on 23 September 2026. Built on six past Test 4 sittings — P21S through P25S, the latest March 2026 — with every rate and Income Tax Act section checked against the current Act.

Why Test 4 is predictable.

One topic leads every list: international tax appears in five of the six sittings, in two forms — transfer pricing under section 31, and the cross-border set (double tax agreements, non-resident taxation and withholding). Deceased estates and estate duty follow in three of the six. Behind them sits a reliable admin-and-ethics tail — provisional tax and penalties, dividends tax, and the SAICA Code — small on any one paper but 15 to 20 easy marks together. What's deliberately in the background: your P26F Tests 1, 2 and 3 have already consumed VAT, capital gains, gross income, deferred tax, leases, employment and PAYE, so those are foundations rather than the lead — and international tax, dividends, provisional tax and ethics haven't been examined in your P26F cycle at all, which is exactly why they lead. The examiner builds it the same way each time: a cross-border transaction to re-price or a treaty to invoke, a death that fires CGT and estate duty together, a dividend in specie, a provisional-tax under-estimation, an ethics breach, and an error-review of a draft. Recent sittings show the weight — transfer pricing has carried up to 14 marks, the provisional-tax-and-penalties question 11, the dividend in specie 10. The Blueprint ranks every topic by how likely it is to appear, from international tax and the deceased estate (very high) through dividends, provisional tax and ethics, down to the error-review form.

The six-week plan.

Weeks 1 to 4 are content; the closing stretch is practice. Each of the four topic weeks — International I (cross-border), International II (transfer pricing and foreign dividends), Deceased Estate & CGT on Death, and Provisional Tax, TAA, Ethics & Dividends — comes with a study guide, a weekly mock and a harder cumulative challenger, and the live session works the content. Week 5 is a full past paper, P23S, worked end to end in the session. The build then turns coverage into exam performance: a fresh 50-mark integrated mock as a dress rehearsal, then a debrief-and-revision week before the exam.

What comes with each topic pack.

A topic guide (PDF) from first principles, a weekly mock question (PDF), and a harder cumulative challenger question (PDF) — one scenario, Baobab Global Holdings, that grows across all four weeks so later parts depend on your earlier answers. Every question ships with an eight-tab solution workbook (Excel) with live formulas behind every figure: how to attack the paper, the scenario triggers and what they signal, the sections to cite, the principles being tested, the frameworks to reproduce from memory, the fully worked mock and challenger solutions point by point, and the marker's notes on where marks are won and lost. The full programme is the Blueprint, four complete topic packs, the P23S walkthrough, and the 50-mark dress-rehearsal mock with its solution.

Prepared by David Du Preez, CTA Thrive Coach. Independent — not affiliated with Milpark Education.