Converged is not the same as identical, and the difference is not academic
India did not adopt IFRS Accounting Standards. It wrote its own set, Ind AS, converged with IFRS but deliberately different in places, notified separately under the Companies Act 2013, and updated on India's timetable rather than the IASB's. For most purposes that distinction never surfaces. It surfaces the moment somebody outside India asks for IFRS, and at that point the question is not whether your accounts are good. It is whether they say what the reader thinks they say.
- Three distinct kinds of difference, which need three different responses
- Why the compliance statement in your accounts is the single most important sentence in this whole area
- What MCA notified on 12 August 2026, and what it has still not notified
Three kinds of difference, not one
Almost every published comparison of Ind AS and IFRS runs them together into a single list of differences. That is unhelpful, because the three kinds behave completely differently over time. One is permanent, one is deliberate, and one closes on its own.
1. Carve-outs
Places where Ind AS deliberately departs from the equivalent IFRS requirement, usually because the IFRS treatment was judged unsuitable for Indian conditions or inconsistent with Indian law. These do not close with time. They are the reason a set of Ind AS accounts cannot simply be relabelled.
2. Carve-ins
Places where Ind AS adds a requirement, or removes an option that IFRS allows. An entity applying Ind AS may be doing more than IFRS requires, which is usually harmless for an IFRS reader but matters for effort, and occasionally for the numbers.
3. Timing differences
IFRS changes that India has not yet notified. These are temporary by nature and are the largest category at any given moment. They are also the easiest to get wrong, because the correct answer changes without anything being announced in the standard itself.
Why the classification matters in practice. A carve-out has to be permanently reconciled. A timing difference has to be tracked until India catches up, and then stops being a difference at all. If your reconciliation treats both the same way, it will be wrong in one direction now and in the other direction later.
Can your accounts state compliance with IFRS?
The short answer is no, and there is Indian material directly on the point rather than only a reading of IAS 1. SA 700 (Revised), in its application material on reference to more than one financial reporting framework, uses the standards notified under section 133 of the Companies Act 2013 alongside IFRS as its own worked example. It sets two decisive tests that IAS 1 does not spell out: compliance with each framework must be full and simultaneous, and it must not depend on any reconciling statement. It then says in terms that simultaneous compliance is unlikely unless the other framework has itself been adopted for that entity, or every barrier to complying with it has been removed.
So a set of accounts prepared under Ind AS which carries a note reconciling the result to IFRS is not, on that account, prepared under IFRS. Neither a reconciliation nor a disclosure describing the extent of compliance with IFRS is itself a statement of compliance with IFRS. The answer can still differ where no carve-out actually bites, because the test is a factual one about a particular set of financial statements rather than a statement about a jurisdiction. But that is not a default. It needs a positive, entity-specific assessment that no carve-out affects any recognised or measured amount, that no Ind AS-only option has been used, that every IFRS disclosure requirement is met, and that presentation satisfies IAS 1 or IFRS 18 as well as Schedule III Division II. Four structural obstacles make it rare: India applies amendments from 1 April where IFRS applies them from 1 January, a real difference for any entity without a March year end; Ind AS systematically removes IFRS early-application options, and the August 2026 notification says so expressly; Ind AS 118 and Ind AS 119 do not yet exist while IFRS 18 and IFRS 19 do; and Schedule III Division II prescribes Indian-specific presentation.
There is a middle course, and it is the one most finance teams actually want. SA 700 contemplates financial statements prepared under one framework which describe in the notes the extent to which they comply with another. That is treated as supplementary financial information and falls within the auditor's opinion where it cannot be clearly separated from the financial statements. It lets you say how far your Ind AS accounts align with IFRS without asserting compliance you cannot support, and it is a materially different thing from a dual compliance statement.
Making the statement is a bigger step than it looks. An explicit and unreserved statement of compliance with IFRS is not a label that can be added to accounts prepared on another basis. Where an entity has not reported under IFRS before, making it raises first-time adoption questions that have to be worked through before the accounts are signed rather than after, and those are the subject of the guide on converting to IFRS. It is not a costless description, and it is worth taking advice on your own facts before anyone commits to the sentence. It is also why near-universal market practice, for an Indian subsidiary of a foreign parent, is a separate IFRS reporting package for the parent rather than a dual label on the statutory accounts.
What this means operationally is the reason clients call us. If the group reporting pack you send your parent is described internally as "IFRS", and it is in fact Ind AS with a few adjustments, then somebody in the group's consolidation chain is relying on a description that has never been tested. That is a cheap problem to fix in a quiet quarter and an expensive one to discover during an audit or a transaction.
The IFRS Foundation's own jurisdiction profile for India reaches the same conclusion from the other direction: asked whether the auditor's report or the basis of preparation note allows dual reporting, the Indian response is recorded as yes, but unlikely given the differences between Ind AS and IFRS. The profile also records that India has not adopted IFRS Standards and that they are neither permitted nor required. Note it was last updated in October 2019, so it is reliable for the headline position and not for the detail.
What India notified recently, and what it has not
This is the section that dates fastest, and the reason these pages carry a review schedule rather than a publication date.
| Change | Position under IFRS | Position under Ind AS |
|---|---|---|
| Annual improvements to the standards (IFRS Volume 11, issued July 2024, amending IFRS 1, IFRS 7, IFRS 9, IFRS 10 and IAS 7) | Effective for annual reporting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2026 | Brought in for annual reporting periods beginning on or after 1 April 2026, amending exactly the five matching standards: Ind AS 101, 107, 109, 110 and 7. India calls the package Annual Improvements to Ind AS (2024), not Volume 11 |
| Classification and measurement of financial instruments (issued May 2024) | Effective for annual reporting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2026 | Brought in by the same Indian rules, from 1 April 2026 |
| Contracts referencing nature-dependent electricity (issued December 2024) | Effective for annual reporting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2026 | Brought in by the same Indian rules, from 1 April 2026. Relevant to any group holding a renewable power purchase agreement |
| IFRS 18 Presentation and Disclosure in Financial Statements | Issued April 2024, effective for annual reporting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2027 | Exposure draft, not notified. ICAI issued the exposure draft of Ind AS 118 on 6 January 2025, proposing an effective date of 1 April 2027 |
| IFRS 19 Subsidiaries without Public Accountability: Disclosures | Issued May 2024, effective for annual reporting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2027 | Exposure draft, not notified. ICAI issued the exposure draft of Ind AS 119 on 5 December 2025, proposing an effective date of 1 April 2027 |
| Insurance contracts | IFRS 17, effective since 1 January 2023 | Ind AS 117 is notified, by G.S.R. 492(E) of 12 August 2024, for periods beginning on or after 1 April 2024, with Ind AS 104 omitted at the same time. See the note below on who it actually catches |
The IFRS column is taken from the IFRS Foundation's own change note for the 2026 edition of the Bound Volume, read 18 August 2026. The Indian column reflects subject-matter review of 20 August 2026.
Do not read the 2026 Indian rules as one IASB package. They bundle three, and a reader who maps them only onto the annual improvements will understate what changed on 1 April 2026. They also record what was deliberately left out, which is more useful than it sounds: the paragraphs relating to IFRS 18 and IFRS 19 were excluded because the corresponding Ind AS are still under formulation, and one paragraph was excluded because it relates to early application. That last exclusion is standing Indian practice, and it is one of the reasons an Ind AS entity cannot simply describe its accounts as IFRS.
And 1 April 2026 is the general rule, not a flat one. The notification sets separate transition provisions for the financial instruments amendments and the nature-dependent electricity amendments: prior periods are not restated, and the effect is taken through opening retained earnings or equity instead. Anyone planning the transition should read those provisions rather than assuming a single uniform date.
Ind AS 117 catches more than insurers, and insurers arrive by a different route. Because insurance companies sit outside Rule 4 of the Ind AS Rules, the MCA notification bites mainly on entities that are not insurers but issue insurance-type contracts, such as financial guarantees, warranties and certain loan commitments, and on insurance subsidiaries consolidated into Ind AS parents. Insurers themselves were brought in separately, by the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Actuarial, Finance and Investment Functions of Insurers) (Amendment) Regulations 2026, F. No. IRDAI/Reg/2/216/2026, notified at Hyderabad on 30 March 2026 under powers including section 114A(2) of the Insurance Act 1938 and amending the 2024 regulations of the same name.
Two dates run alongside each other here and they are not the same date. The regulations were notified and published on 30 March 2026. They came into force on 1 April 2026, that being the later of 1 April 2026 and the date of publication in the Official Gazette. If you are dating a compliance obligation, it is the April date that counts.
Where that leaves an Indian insurer, and anyone consolidating one. Forbearance was available on application and runs to 31 March 2027, so the first implementation year is FY 2026-27 for insurers that did not seek it and FY 2027-28 for those that did. Indian insurer financial statements will therefore not be comparable with each other for a year. Parallel reporting alongside the existing Indian basis runs for two years rather than one. In the first implementation year the numbers require independent validation by a chartered accountancy firm independent of both the statutory auditor and any implementation service provider, and the appointed actuary has defined reporting duties to the Board.
One wrinkle worth knowing before it surprises you: an insurer under forbearance may continue preparing financial statements under Ind AS 104 for consolidation purposes through the extension, even though Ind AS 104 was omitted from the Companies (Indian Accounting Standards) Rules in 2024. Any group consolidating an Indian insurance subsidiary will meet that point directly.
Two earlier sets of Indian amendment rules sit behind these and are worth knowing about, because the 2026 rules were not the first move: one notified in May 2025 dealing with lack of exchangeability under Ind AS 21, and one in August 2025 covering non-current liabilities with covenants, supplier finance arrangements and the Pillar Two temporary exception. Separately, do not confuse the 2026 Ind AS amendment rules with the Companies (Accounting Standards) Amendment Rules 2026, which amend AS 22 for Pillar Two under the older non-Ind AS regime. Different rules, different population of companies.
What clients usually ask at this point
Our parent says our accounts are IFRS. Are they?
Probably not, in the strict sense, unless somebody has run the exercise. What is usually true is that the reporting pack is Ind AS with a small number of group adjustments applied on top, which for most groups produces an answer indistinguishable from IFRS. The risk is not that the numbers are wrong. It is that nobody can demonstrate they are right when asked.
How long does a difference analysis take?
For a single operating entity with conventional transactions, weeks rather than months. The variable is not the size of the balance sheet, it is how many of the genuinely difficult areas the entity touches: long-term foreign currency borrowing, financial instruments measured at anything other than amortised cost, revenue with variable consideration, and business combinations.
Do we have to keep two sets of books?
Very rarely, and it is usually a sign the problem has been solved the expensive way. The normal answer is one ledger under the statutory framework, plus a documented and repeatable reconciliation to the second framework, maintained by your own team once we have built it.
Does this change when India adopts IFRS 18?
Materially, yes, because IFRS 18 changes the structure of the income statement rather than a measurement rule. A reconciliation built on today's presentation will need rebuilding. That is one reason we would rather scope a conversion now with 2027 in view than build something that has a known expiry date.
Where this sits
IFRS Advisory
The overview page, with all five guides listed and the situations each one answers.
Ind AS and IFRS: Where They Differ
Guide 1. The diagnosis: what is actually different between the framework you use and the one you are asked for.
Converting to IFRS
Guide 2. IFRS 1, the transition date, the elections, and the reconciliations a first IFRS set of accounts must disclose.
Revenue, Leases and Financial Instruments
Guide 3. IFRS 15, IFRS 16 and IFRS 9, plus the amendments effective 1 January 2026.
Consolidation, Business Combinations and Foreign Currency
Guide 4. IFRS 3, IFRS 10, IAS 28 and IAS 21.
What Changes Next
Guide 5. IFRS 18 and IFRS 19 from 1 January 2027, and where sustainability reporting has got to.
Send an enquiry
If the question in front of you is whether your accounts can be described as IFRS, or what it would take for them to be, that is a scoping conversation rather than a project. A partner replies within one business day.
This page is general information, not professional advice. IFRS Accounting Standards, the Indian Accounting Standards notified under section 133 of the Companies Act 2013, and the tax law that interacts with both, all change frequently, and how any of it applies depends on your own facts. The Income-tax Act 2025 replaced the 1961 Act with effect from 1 April 2026. Take professional advice before acting on anything on this page. We are happy to be that adviser, but we do not act on a web page, ours or anyone else's, without one.