Work-in-progress treatment: costs to secure construction contracts must be capitalised and not deducted until related work is performed.
Precontract costs to secure construction contracts must be treated as an asset and characterised as work-in-progress, representing amounts due from customers, and therefore should not be claimed as a deduction in the year of incurrence but carried forward and recognised when the related construction or installation work is performed.

Incidental income in construction contracts: deduct from contract costs; investment returns taxed separately under income provisions.
Incidental incomes arising from construction contracts are not part of contract revenue and must be reduced from contract costs; examples include sale of surplus materials and disposal of plant and equipment. Income in the nature of interest, dividends and capital gains is excluded from incidental income and is taxed separately under applicable law.

Proviso to section 36(1)(iii) inapplicable to construction contracts; interest on contract borrowings is deductible for execution purposes.
Proviso to section 36(1)(iii) does not apply to borrowings by contractors for executing construction contracts because such borrowings are not for acquisition of an asset; therefore interest on capital borrowed attributable to a construction contract is not barred by the proviso and is allowable as a deduction under ICDS III.

Retention money recognition: recognise as revenue only when reasonable certainty of ultimate collection exists under ICDS construction rules.
Retention money within a construction contract is part of contract revenue and should be recognised as revenue on billing only when there is reasonable certainty of its ultimate collection, based on the contract's performance criteria and para 9 of ICDS on construction contracts.

Contract revenue recognition: recognize only costs incurred when outcome is not reliably estimable; early-stage limit applies.
When the outcome of a construction contract cannot be estimated reliably, revenue is recognized only to the extent of costs incurred, subject to an early-stage completion limit specified in the Income Computation and Disclosure Standard on Construction Contracts.

Percentage of completion method recognizes construction contract revenue, expenses and profit by proportion of work completed.
Recognition of revenue and expenses for construction contracts under ICDS III is governed by the percentage of completion method, whereby revenue, costs and profit are recognized by reference to the stage of completion of contract activity on the reporting date and reported in proportion to work completed.

Bad debt deduction available without book write off when previously taxed income becomes irrecoverable under the statutory proviso.
If contract revenue was offered to tax under ICDS but not recorded in the books and later becomes irrecoverable, it cannot be written off in the absence of a book entry; instead, deduction may be claimed under the statutory proviso allowing bad debt deduction without book write off where the amount was taken into account in computing income in the previous year in which it became irrecoverable or an earlier year.

Retention money recognition as revenue requires reasonable certainty of ultimate collection under ICDS on construction contracts.
Retention money, as part of overall contract revenue under the ICDS on construction contracts, shall be recognised as revenue only when the contingency tied to performance is satisfied or there is reasonable certainty of its ultimate collection.