Students from Sunway TES Are Champions in the Deloitte Tax Challenge 2014

Leong Ching Yip, Ho Chan Wee, Clement Yong Yung Syin and Esther Lian Li Ling of Team Onz from Sunway TES, Sunway College Kuala Lumpur beat five other teams to emerge champions in the Deloitte Tax Challenge 2014.

The team went through a preliminary challenge before being selected to the finals. The final challenge was a case study of a group of listed companies where they were tasked with coming up with solutions for tax planning & efficiency, incentive and real property gain tax (RBGT). In this final stage, teams were judged 70% on presentation and 30% on technical knowledge.

From left: Clement Yong Yung Syin, Ho Chan Wee, Mr Teo Ee Sing, Executive Director of Sunway TES and Sunway College, Esther Lian Li Ling and Leong Ching Yip

The team members all agreed that they worked well together, the combination of their different skills and strengths helped tremendously in the finals.

Leong Ching Yip cites the most memorable part of the competition for him was when the group sat down to discuss solutions to the task and the final presentation in front of the judges. Leong who is looking forward to joining Deloitte in January 2015 as a tax assistant said, “Good teamwork is very important”.

Ho Chan Wee explained, “Working in a team is much better as each one has different strengths. Leong has had past experience as he participated in last year’s challenge, Clement has good slide and presentation skills, Esther is good in digging up information and myself good in tax knowledge.” He further expressed that not only knowledge is essential to success as soft skills also play a key role.

On their victory, Esther Lian said “Winning the grand prize certainly made us feel that if we put our minds to the immediate task, anything is possible!” For her, “It was an eye opening and an enlightening experience, the kind that comes only once in a lifetime.” In preparation for the competition she said, “We did mock exercises on past year questions, mock presentations and improved from there.”

For Clement Yong, the biggest challenge for the team was “Managing time during the final case study as we needed to formulate a proposal and prepare our presentation slides in three hours. Selecting critical issues and proposing creative ideas was challenging but it was certainly good experience.”

Clement Yong was also awarded Best Presenter for the Team Category. The four friends currently in the final year and final semester of the ACCA programme at Sunway TES took home a cash prize of RM8,000 in the annual event organised by Deloitte.