However, Parliament took cognizance of the fact that the accounting year of a company did not always tally with the due dates under the Provident Fund Act, Municipal Corporation Act (octroi) and other tax laws. Therefore, by way of the first proviso, an incentive/relaxation was sought to be given in respect of tax, duty, cess or fee by explicitly stating that if such tax, duty, cess or fee is paid before the date of filing of the return under the Income-tax Act ( due date), the assessee(s) then would be entitled to deduction. However, this relaxation/incentive was restricted only to tax, duty, cess and fee. It did not apply to contributions to labour welfare funds. The reason appears to be that the employer(s) should not sit on the collected contributions and deprive the workmen of the rightful benefits under social welfare legislations by delaying payment of contributions to the welfare funds. However, as stated above, the second proviso resulted in implementation problems, which have been mentioned hereinabove, and which resulted in the enactment of the Finance Act, 2003, deleting the second proviso and bringing about uniformity in the first proviso by equating tax, duty, cess, and fee with contributions to welfare funds. Once this uniformity is brought about in the first proviso, then, in our view, the Finance Act, 2003, which is made applicable by Parliament only with effect
