The committee questioned the three witnesses - Patrick Stevens, president of CIOT, Bill Dodwell, head of tax policy at Deloitte and vice chairman of the CIOT Technical Committee and Richard Murphy, head of Tax Research LLP - on how effective they believe the GAAR will be in tackling the types of tax avoidance highlighted by the PAC committee hearing on Starbucks, Google and Amazon.
Dodwell said: 'I think that if an individual, in particular, tries to enter into an arrangement with little if any commercial or economic consequence beyond a tax saving, then I think they will find themselves straight within the compass of the GAAR, of this limited anti-abuse rule.'If you are dealing with business life, the loss generation schemes that we have seen I would expect in many cases would be caught by an anti-abuse rule once it is enacted.'
Richard Murphy, meanwhile, said he thought that was "about as far as this GAAR is going to go".
'What we do know with absolute certainty is that this GAAR would not, for example, tackle any of the abuse that is being discussed with regard to Google, Amazon and Starbucks, which the PAC looked at, which is clearly seen to be common place in its structuring,' said Murphy. 'It is not intended to challenge a whole host of other arrangements which are now normal in business, but which nonetheless, appear to most people on the Clapham Omnibus would appear abusive, but this is not going anywhere near those.
'It is basically targeted at pre-packaged and planned tax abuse schemes, which would involve a degree of artificialness, which are designed specifically to look at very particular opportunities to construct abuse through a series of steps which are designed to exploit a loophole in the law. It is a very narrow piece of work.
However, Stevens was more positive about its value.
He said: 'For what it's worth, I think it is worthwhile having. If we have a tax system where people can do things which are "ridiculous" it brings the system into disrepute. Whether there should be more is probably something we won't agree on, but let's not throw away what there is there.'
Murphy professed to be "astonished" by the comments of David Cameron and George Osborne on tax avoidance that "GAAR would fill the gap that they say they are trying plug". 'It won't - it goes nowhere near those things that have attracted the headlines.
'I think there will be an enormous and sudden realisation that this part of the Finance Bill will fail in its objectives and I imagine there will be a great deal of debate in the House of Commons as it goes through its passage there.'
The views expressed on Wednesday echoed those of two of the UK's top tax lawyers who told the committee on Monday that GAAR would not be able to eradicate multinational tax planning and avoidance.