Last month Finance Bill 2013 reached its final stage and is now Finance Act 2013. The Act contains some major changes to the UK taxation system not least being the introduction of the General Anti Abuse rule which is now in play (for abusive tax arrangements entered into on or after 17 July). Guidance on the GAAR is available on the HMRC website.

Readers are reminded that many new measures announced during the 2012 Autumn Statement and at previous budgets are also now enacted. This includes the cap on income tax reliefs (draft guidance for which was published in March), the statutory residence test and the new legislation for controlled foreign companies (draft guidance also available).

HM Treasury's Overview of Tax Legislation and Rates is a useful summary of all measures effective as a result of this Finance Act.

Legislation was also introduced to reform the IHT treatment of transfers between UK-domiciled individuals and their non-UK domiciled spouse/civil partner in two ways:

• the current cap of £55,000 is increased to the level of the prevailing nil-rate band level of £325,000; and
• under a new election regime, individuals domiciled other than in the UK and who are married or in a civil partnership with a UK domiciled person can now elect to be treated as UK-domiciled for IHT purposes.

The legislation also allows individuals who have become UK domiciled to make a retrospective election to cover an earlier period when they were non-UK domiciled. There is also provision for individuals whose marriage or civil partnership has been dissolved to make a retrospective election to cover the period they were married or in civil partnership with a UK domiciled person.

As always, the devil is often in the detail – in recent weeks a number of report stage amendments to the original draft clauses were introduced (particularly affecting the new statutory residence test). Whilst HMRC guidance is helpful, the specific legislation clauses should always be first port of call for detail of the new measures.