The Finance Ministry has deferred by a year the implementation of the income computation and disclosure standards (ICDS).

The ICDS were earlier meant to come into effect from April 1, 2015, but will now come into force from April 1, 2016, according to an official statement.

“The ICDS deferral is a pragmatic step in a series of recent initiatives to make the regime taxpayer friendly, both in terms of compliance and certainty,” Vishal J Shah, Partner, Tax & Regulatory, PwC India said. “In line with the Eswar panel recommendations, the government should work out a plan for convergence of the taxation framework with the IND-AS regime before implementing the ICDS.”

ICDS are tax accounting standards to help compute taxable income of assessees following the mercantile system of accounting.

“Some of the tax payers might have filed their return of income and obtained Tax Audit Report without incorporating the compliance with the ICDS and related disclosures in the absence of the revised Tax Audit Report,” according to the government statement. “Considering these facts, it has been decided that the ICDS shall be applicable from April 1, 2016 i.e. previous year 2016-17 (Assessment Year 2017-18). The notification to this effect will be issued shortly.”

Pay Commission
The government also sought to allay employee unions' concerns surrounding the Seventh Pay Commission implementation by saying that the issue will be taken up by a high-level committee. Representatives of unions representing employees of the Central Government met Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Minister for Railways Suresh Prabhu.

“They had requested that certain issues raised by them in relation to the pay scales and other recommendations of the Pay Commission be allowed to be raised before a Committee of Secretaries looking into different aspects of grievances of employees in relation to the Pay Commission recommendations,” according to a government statement.

The ministers assured the union leaders that the issues raised by them would be considered by a high level committee.