General Anti-Avoidance Rules The GAAR (General Anti-Avoidance Rule) provisions have not been put on hold.The Finance Act, 2012 had provided that these provisions shall be effective from the 1st day of April, 2014 and apply to Assessment year 2014-15 onwards.

One of the recommendations of the Parthasarathi Shome Committee is that GAAR should be deferred for 3 years. The Committee has cited the following reasons for suggesting this deferral:

‘The implementation of GAAR may be deferred by three years on administrative grounds. GAAR is an extremely advanced instrument of tax administration – one of deterrence, rather than for revenue generation – for which intensive training of tax officers, who would specialize in the finer aspects of international taxation, is needed’.

This was stated by the Minister of Finance, Shri S.S.Planimanickam in a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha.