WHAT IS EPF?

Employee Provident Fund (EPF) is a scheme regulated by central government under “The Employees’ Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952”which came into effect from 1951 which extends to whole of India except Jammu & Kashmir. EPF is one of the most beneficial investment methods for salaried employee. Government has initiated EPF registration and made it compulsory with certain conditions mainly for cultivating the habits of saving for all employees working in private sector, public sector or even in government undertakings.

APPLICABILITY OF EPF

REGISTRATION under EPF is compulsory:

• For every factory engaged in industry employing 20 or more employees
• For every other establishment having 20 or more employees during previous year.
• For every employee who is getting less than INR 15000/- per month.

CONTRIBUTION

Every employee who joins any establishment which is covered under EPF scheme has to mandatorily contribute certain percentage of his salary. These contributions have to be made regularly. The Contribution made by an employee is pooled up in the form of saving or investment which is given to the employee at the time of his retirement or he switches his job.

REGISTRATION PROCESS

The step-by-step registration process for EPF is as per the following:

• EMPLOYER’S REGISTRATION Registration under EPFO portal starts with registering an organization under Employer’s registration service. Go to EPFO official website https://epfindia.gov.in.
• COMMON REGISTRATION Earlier registration under EPF and ESIC was done separately which is now segregated by EPFO by creating “Common Registration Under (EPFO & ESIC)” which directly opens another tab for single common registration of EPF & ESIC.
• COMPLETE EMPLOYER’S DETAIL First and foremost, complete the first part of application by completing the details of employer and creating the User-id and password at this step:
  •Complete Details of owner such as Name, Address, Email Id etc.
  •PAN of employer.
  •Username has to be selected by an employer which can be used in future for login and return filing.
  •Employer will get OTP PIN on its registered Mobile Number which has to be entered for verification.
  •Last confirmation on E-mail has to be verified to activate the employer’s login.
• LOGIN WITH EMPLOYER CREDENTIAL After completing the Employer registration and email verification go to EPFO official website https://epfindia.gov.in and login with “employer’s login” for further registration of establishment.
• REGISTRATION OF DSC DSC of an employer has to be registered in an EPF portal by clicking “establishment” from the options. Select DSC/E-Sign from drop-down menu and proceed with DSC registration.
• ESTABLISHMENT REGISTRATION Complete the registration by completing the details of establishment in an application and submit the application. After Establishment registration, login by clicking Establishment Login for further compliances.

MONTHLY COMPLIANCES

Return has to be filled every month by following necessary step. Return is filled online by doing establishment login. Return has to be filled before 15th of every month in ECR format. Download the ECR sheets from ECR payment option under drop-down menu of Payments. Complete the downloaded sheet in XML by filing the details and converting into Comma-dilemma file in TXT form for uploading the same. File the return by making the Contribution payment online directly on an EPFO portal.