National Tax Competition 2026 @ NBS

It all began in early January 2026, when a friend asked if I wanted to join him for a competition. We had initially considered the National Cashflow Competition, but switched to a tax competition since we'd be covering taxation in the upcoming semester. With five members in our group, the team was set. Although I'll be honest, at that point, this felt more like a side quest than a serious pursuit.

Time flew by, and before I knew it, competition day was around the corner. The event was on 3rd March, and with the school term keeping us all occupied, I only began preparing in earnest three days before. Not ideal, I know.

We were midway through our taxation module at the time, so my strongest footing was in Individual Tax and Corporate Tax. A significant portion of those three days went into revising those topics partly for the competition, and partly because a mid-term assessment was looming the following week. For the remaining chapters, I relied on a friend's notes from a previous semester and put together a crash course, with Claude helping me get a solid overview of topics like GST and M&A Allowance. By the night before, I was thoroughly drained and decided the most practical thing to do was simply print everything out — thankfully, it was an open-book competition.

Competition Day

On the day itself, we gathered at SMU before carpooling to Lee Kong Chian Lecture Theatre. After a quick breakfast and registration, the event kicked off with sharing sessions from the organiser and sponsors. At 10am, the preliminary round began.

The preliminary round consisted of a single paper covering both MCQs and tax computations. The high-stakes element? Negative marking for wrong MCQ answers. We divided the work among ourselves and pushed right up to the last second, but we weren't able to complete the tax computation section. It was a team effort, though in hindsight our time management and work allocation could have been sharper. It also didn't help that each group was given only one copy of the question paper to share among all five members.

The questions covered a broad range: corporate tax, individual tax, GST, M&A Allowance, group relief, and partnership tax computations. It was a well-rounded mix, but given the gaps in my preparation, I couldn't approach many of the answers with full confidence.

By the end of the preliminary round, we were fairly subdued. Making the top four out of 20+ teams seemed like a stretch, if we were being honest with ourselves. We sat through the sponsor presentations and enjoyed a decent buffet lunch.

Then came the finalist announcement, and we were genuinely stunned to see our group's name on the list. We even checked our name tent just to be sure.

After the exhilarating moments, the finalist groups were split into separate rooms to work on a case study. The case was about giving recommendation to a Singapore-based coffee company looking to expand into R&D and proprietary technology. Specifically, the company wanted to develop a coffee extraction system and had three ways to get there - (1) buy a foreign company that already owned the technology, (2) build it themselves from scratch in Singapore, (3) or simply license it from a subsidiary overseas. Each option came with its own set of tax implications, cross-border complications, and strategic trade-offs, and our job was to analyse all three proposals across Singapore income tax, transfer pricing, GST, and international tax treaty considerations, before making a final recommendation on which path the company should take.

We had one hour to research and build our slide deck, followed by another hour to prepare for the presentation. We were the third group to present, and after delivering our case, we faced a rigorous Q&A session from the judges.

With the competitive portion wrapped up, we returned to the lecture theatre for the final results announcement. The wait felt long, but it was well worth it — we came in second place.

The event closed on a high note, with a lucky draw and a group photo to cap things off.

This was my first accounting-related competition, and it exceeded my expectations in the best way. Up until university, my competitive experience had been limited to science-related events throughout secondary school and junior college. Stepping into something entirely different and doing well at it was genuinely encouraging.

Beyond the result, this experience sharpened my interest in tax and gave me the confidence to explore more competitions in the future. If anything, it's a reminder that throwing yourself into something unfamiliar, even imperfectly prepared, can still lead somewhere worthwhile.

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