Enforcement of the provision of the Affordable Care Act that prohibits employers from offering better health benefits to a company’s more highly paid executives than its other employees is on hold, at least until the Internal Revenue Service can issue guidelines.

The delay was published in a report in The New York Times.A number of delays and extensions related to the controversial health care law and the troubled roll out of online health insurance exchanges have been issued by the Obama administration.The IRS was reportedly grappling with such questions as how to define “highly compensated” and how to measure the value of health benefits. IRS spokesperson Bruce I. Friedland was reported as saying that employers do not have to comply until the agency issued regulations or some type of guidance.A similar ban has been in place for some 30 years for companies that serve as their own insurers, and now the Affordable Care Act established that same policy for companies that purchase insurance through commercial carriers such as Aetna, Cigna, WellPoint and local Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans. A Treasury spokesperson told the Times several departments are working together to create rules that can implement the provisions.