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Showing posts with label Online EPF. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Online EPF. Show all posts

Filing PF Withdrawal Claims Online Likely to be a Reality in December 2014

New Delhi: The Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) will launch the online facility for submitting provident fund withdrawal claims in December, which would quicken such settlements and benefit its over five crore subscribers.
At present, subscribers of the retirement fund body have to file PF settlement claims manually after they leave a job or after their retirement. The online application of such claims would enable EPFO to eventually settle those within three days.
"EPFO has decided to provide the facility of online application for PF withdrawal claims. It will be launched by mid-December," a source said.
According to the source, all those subscribers whose PF and bank accounts are linked with Aadhaar number would be able to avail this facility.
Elaborating further he said that since Aadhaar number provide anywhere anytime authentication of identity on the basis of captured biometric details of a person, there would be remote chances of fraud or cheating.
A senior official said that sometimes EPFO takes more than mandated 30 days for settling provident fund withdrawals claims due to various reasons including errors while filling the manual form.
He said, "EPFO would eventually settle all type of claims including PF withdrawal and transfer within three days of filing those applications."
EPFO has planned to settle 20-30 per cent of PF claims online by the end of this financial year. During the last fiscal year, it had settled a total of 1.21 crore claims including over a million PF transfer cases.
The body has recently issued over four crore Universal PF Account Numbers (UAN) which are being seeded with Aadhaar number and bank accounts. This portable PF account would enable subscribers to have only one account while working with various employers throughout his/her life.

Changes in Provident Fund Rules

Changes in Provident Fund Rules
planning for retirement is as important as planning for one’s career and marriage. Everybody wishes to have a secure, independent retirement life, where you would not depend on others for your needs. Investments and allocations are accordingly channelized in this direction to achieve the desired goals. The Employee Provident Fund (EPF), Employee Pension Scheme (EPS) and Public Provident Fund (PPF) are some of the popular products to invest for the retirement years.

In the past few months, radical changes have been introduced in these schemes. Let us have a look at them.

1) PF portability: Every time you join a new company, you were given a new PF number. Then you had the option of moving your funds to the new account. Whether you did this or not affected the taxability of your PF deposits. Not any more. Your PF accounts are now going to be portable. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi is going to launch the much-awaited Universal PF Account Number (UAN) website to enable PF portability on October 16. The UAN will be portable throughout the working career of an employee. With the UAN in place, workers in the organized sector need not apply for transfer of PF claim in case of job-change. This means, the PF subscriber will not get a new number on joining a new firm. Instead the employee will get an ID linked to UAN. So, this mechanism will help in smoothening PF transfer claims. The new website is expected to provide an individual personalized log-in mechanism to help in tasks like viewing updated PF amount, transfer claims and updating KYC.

Currently, the EPFO is in the process of linking the UAN of its 40 million subscribers with their bank accounts, Permanent Account Number (PAN), Aadhar and other identification details.

2) Bank account and PF portability: The retirement fund body has asked companies to provide bank account numbers of their employer members by October 15. It has also asked for the IFSC or Indian Financial System Code number for easy transfer of PF payment. The IFSC helps identify the branch where the account is based. This helps transfer money easily. The bank account numbers with IFSC codes will be linked to the Universal PF Account Number (UAN). This will help in portability of PF accounts.

3) Higher PF wage ceiling: The retirement fund body Employee Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) has raised the salary limit for maintaining a PF account to Rs 15,000. Earlier, the limit was Rs 6,500 per month. This means, any organized sector employee earning up to Rs 15,000-a-month have to compulsorily hold an EPF account with the government. For those earning more than Rs 15,000, it is a voluntary option. This is to ensure that low-wage earners have a sufficient kitty to help them in their retirement. This new measure is expected to bring in 50 lakh new PF subscribers, according to the EPFO.

12% of an employee’s basic salary goes to the PF account and is payable back to him/her together with interest once he/she leaves the company. The employer too pays an equal sum – 12% of the basic salary. Out of this, 8.33% goes into the pension scheme and 3.67% into the EPF.

As of now, only organized sector employees are covered under the social security scheme. They amount to about 8% of the total workforce. This still leaves the majority of India’s workers in the unorganized sector without sufficient retirement help.

4) Minimum monthly pension: Once the EPFO subscriber dies, his or her family gets an amount on a monthly basis. The government has raised the minimum monthly pension distributed to Rs 1,000 per month for the financial year 2014-2015. This move will benefit about 28 lakh pensioners, especially widows, some of whom get a paltry sum of Rs 150-200 a month.

5) Insurance limit hiked: Maximum sum assured under Employee Deposit Linked Scheme, 1976 (EDLI) has been hiked to Rs 3 lakhs plus 20% ad hoc benefit over the prescribed amount. This means in case of the death of the subscriber under EPFO, his family is entitled to get Rs 3.6 lakhs instead of the current Rs 1.56 lakhs.

All employers to whom the Employee Provident Fund and Miscellaneous Provision Act applies, have to mandatorily subscribe to the EDLI scheme to provide life insurance benefit to their employees.

The above 3 changes have come into effect from September 1, 2014

6) PF interest rate: When you invest in a provident fund, you earn an interest. The government fixes this rate on a yearly basis. For the year 2014-15, the interest rate on provident fund deposits has been retained at 8.75%. This means, the nearly 50 million PF subscribers will earn 8.75% on their deposit amount this year.

7) Tax on PF withdrawal: If an employee withdraws his PF accumulation before five years of completing service, the entire amount withdrawn will be taxable for that year. However, if you transferred your PF every time you changed you job, your total tenure of work will be calculated. For example, if you worked for a year at company A and for four years at company B, and you transferred your PF, then a total work-period of five years will be calculated.


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Check your PF account online

Check your PF account online

Here is some good news for those of you contributing towards provident fund from your salary with Employees Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) of India. Going forward, salaried people would no longer have to go through the tedious and rather long process of knowing the details of their PF account. Every bit of information related to Provident fund that you may want to track would be just a ‘click’ away in the very near future!

This news is indeed of a great help to about 4.5 crore PF subscribers in India. One this system is online; all the PF accounts across the country would be made available online. Many have gone through a helluva process of getting their PF account details transferred from their previous employers to current one. After all possible kind of interactions with various levels of authorities, till date people have no clue on what is the status of their account transfer. Hope this new system solves all such painful issues associated with individual PF accounts.

The facility is fully functional since December 2009. Due to the sheer size of the number of accounts, it wouldn’t be an easy task for the government organizations to solve this in a short span of time. So, many accounts will be in updating process – according to revelation by EPFO.

How to check your EPF account online?

Log on to the Employee Provident Fund (EPF) portal of Tamil Nadu and provide necessary employment details like Establishment code, Extension code, Employee number, etc to find out the balance in your EPF account

If your EPF number is TN/VLR/123A/1456 then

Establishment Code is 123

Extension Code is A

Employee Number is 1456

Remember, if your establishment has no unit or other branch, there may not be extension number. In that case, you do not have to fill extension number.

Site for checking your EPF account online:

http://epfindia.nic.in/indiaepf/loginnew.aspx

www.epfochennai.tn.nic.in