Introduction
On 11 December 2012 the Government issued draft legislation in
respect of the General Anti-Abuse Rule (GAAR) amending that
published for consultation earlier in June. It also published a
summary of over 14,000 responses to that June consultation and a
draft of a three part guidance to the GAAR, covering (i) the scope
of the legislation, (ii) examples of how the GAAR applies to tax
arrangements and (iii)GAAR procedural matters.
Some points of interest that were raised following the June
consultation document are:
- Inheritance tax will be covered by the GAAR. One of the
indicators of avoidance in the June draft legislation has however
been omitted. This had referred to the presence of arrangements
where an amount was significantly different to its market value or
was otherwise on non-commercial terms. While this change removes an
obvious contradiction with the way inheritance transactions are
normally carried out, there still remains the qualification
