PF

The Union finance ministry on Friday agreed to increase interest rate on provident fund deposits to 8.8% for 2015-16 from the 8.7 % decided by it earlier. The Central Board of Trustees (CBT) had decided 8.8 per cent interest rate, however, the finance ministry approved only 8.7 per cent interest on PF deposits citing lower earnings. This is the third rollback on EPF in the last two months. Last month the government was forced to withdraw the Budget proposal to tax a certain portion of withdrawals. Subsequently, it withdrew tighter withdrawal norms.  

The government has revoked the order tightening rules for withdrawal of provident fund money.  The decision ensures that individuals will NOT have to wait till the age of 58 years to withdraw employer's contribution from their PF money. The notification in Feb put curbs on full withdrawal of provident fund by members after unemployment of more than two months, while it also barred withdrawal of the employer's contribution before the age of 58 years. The decision was first to come into effect immediately, but was first deferred till April 30 and then till July 31, before being scrapped totally on Tuesday evening (19th April). As per Union labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya -  "The notification issued on February, 10, 2016 is cancelled. Now the old system will continue,"  Later, the labour ...

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley announced in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday (8th March) that government has decided to withdraw the proposal to impose tax on withdrawal from the Employees' Provident Fund (EPF) contributions. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley also withdrew the Budget proposal of taxing employer's contribution to provident and superannuation fund (SAF) beyond Rs 1.5 lakh. The rollback of the controversial EPF tax proposal is a step in the right direction and will bring welcome relief to the salaried class, say tax experts With the rollback of these proposals, EPF will continue to be an attractive investment option with an EEE scheme. Exempt in all three stages of EPF - contribution, interest as well as withdrawal. In addition, the exemption provided for 40% withdrawal from the NPS corp...

Retirement fund body EPFO launched a mobile application and other phone-based services like accessing PF account details for its over 3.54 crore subscribers, 49.22 lakh pensioners and 6.1 lakh employers. EPFO launched three mobile based services for the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) members. Mobile Application, SMS-based UAN (Universal Account Number) Activation and Missed Call service A. Mobile Application Once the new mobile application from the EPFO website is downloaded, the members would be able to activate their UAN accounts from their mobile phones and access their accounts to view monthly credits and details available with EPFO. Similarly, EPF pensioners have been given the option to access their pension disbursement details through this mobile app. Likewise, the employ...

EPFO is currently considering to make Universal Account Number (UAN) - portable PF mandatory for all members. The UAN facility was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in October last year and provide many benefits. The main benefit is that the the UAN remains portable throughout the lifetime of an employee and they don't have to apply for PF transfer claims at changing jobs. It is even more beneficial for workers in the construction sector, who often change their contractor after short span of time and take up new jobs after finishing one contract. EPFO has directed its officers to proatively approach all establishments, particularly those with more than 50 UAN members for activation of UAN. The EPFO had issued over four crore UANs to employers across the country in July last ...

Government has allowed EPFO to invest 5 % of its corpus in exchange traded funds (ETF). Labour ministry has notified new investment pattern for the Employees' Provident Fund Organization which allows the body to invest 5-15% per cent of its funds into Equity Market. As this is the first time EPFO will be investing in Equity markets, they are little cautious and decided to invest 1% in the beginning and going upto 5% by end of financial year. The new investment pattern will be applicable for incremental deposits only. As per estimates, the EPFO's incremental deposits for 2014-15 would be around Rs 80,000 crore which means that EPFO will invest approx Rs 5000 crore in stock markets during this fiscal in the form of ETFs. During the current fiscal, the incremental deposits could be around Rs...