The recruitment process to appoint a permanent panel, responsible for overseeing how a General Anti-Abuse Rule (GAAR) will be applied, will now not begin until May, HMRC has revealed.

The proposed GAAR is set to be introduced in Finance Bill 2013 this July and was developed with input from an interim GAAR panel. An interim panel made up 14 tax practitioners, lawyers and stakeholders, which included Deloitte's head of tax policy, Bill Dodwell; Grant Thornton's head of tax, Francesca Lagerberg; and Richard Murphy, head, Tax Research UK, was disbanded on 15 April.

Senior tax partner at Allen & Overy, Patrick Mears, has since been named as chair of the permanent GAAR panel, but HMRC has now confirmed that the process of appointing fellow panel members has not started and will only begin in May.

An HMRC spokesperson said: 'There will be a fully open and advertised process, led by the chair, Patrick Mears. We expect to place the advert for panel members to appear in May - the advert will contain details of the skills and expertise sought and the recruitment process.'