Lesser Known Facts about EPF
By Anupama Deshpande | August 20, 2019

EPF (Employees' Provident Fund) is a retirement benefit scheme available to all salaried employees. It not only offers tax deduction under section 80C of the Income Tax Act but also has a tax-free interest (compounding) and tax free maturity. Overall it is a very significant scheme that ensures a good growth of your hard earned money to generate maximum benefit at the time of your retirement.

Although salaried employees know much of the things about EPF but still there are some lesser known facts about EPF which they must know. Such facts are listed below for their ready reference:

Related post Withdrawal Rules for EPF

1. If you use "UAN based Form 19" then it can bypass the employer signature requirement, if the UAN is linked with the aadhaar card of the employee
2. Both the employer and employee contribute 12% each of the 'basic salary' of the employee plus dearness allowance. The entire 12% of employee's contribution goes into EPF whereas out of the total 12% of the employer's contribution, 8.33% goes into EPS (pension scheme) and remaining 3.67% goes into EPF
3. One can nominate his father, mother, spouse or children but he can't nominate his brother or sister for his EPF
4. One can invest even more than 12% of his basic salary in EPF which is called VPF (Voluntary Provident Fund)
5. The mandatory waiting period of 2 months can be waived and the member can get PF withdrawal immediately in below mentioned 2 cases:
6. Employee who left the job because he is planning to settle abroad or he has got the job in a foreign country
7. Female employee who is leaving job for the purpose of getting married
8. A member can withdraw partially from his EPF account in following cases:
   • Illness: himself, spouse, children or dependant parents. He can withdraw up to 6 months of his basic and DA or his entire contribution, whichever is lower
   • Marriage: himself, his siblings or children. He can withdraw up to 50% of his own share with interest from the EPF account.
   • Education: himself, his siblings or children. He can withdraw up to 50% of his own share with interest from the EPF account.
   • Purchase or construction of a house: owned by him, his spouse or jointly by both of them. He can withdraw the least of 36 months of basic wage along with dearness allowance (DA), or the total of employee and employer shares with interest or total cost of the house. The member should have completed 5 years of service to apply
   • Unemployment: He can withdraw up to 75% on having unemployment of a month
   • Home Loan Repayment: He can withdraw from EPF for repayment of housing loan only if he has completed 10 years of service to opt for it
   • On completion of 7 years of service: He can withdraw up to 50% of his own share with interest from the EPF account
9. A member can claim EPF settlement amount through cheque
10. If your salary is lower than Rs 15,000 you can avail life insurance benefit under the Employees Deposit Linked Insurance Scheme (EDLI) which provides life insurance of up to Rs 6 lakhs. For availing this benefit, the employer is required to pay 0.50% of your basic salary as its premium
11. You can file an RTI application for any issue related to EPF
12. You can avail various services related to EPFO such as tracking claim status, live chat, account details via SMS, seed your Aadhaar number with your UAN, etc. through the Umang app
13. Any establishment not having 20 employees can also join EPF, if the majority of employees and the employer can voluntarily opt for joining the Scheme as per provisions of Section-1(4) of the Act (Voluntary Coverage)
14. No interest is offered on EPS (pension part)
15. TDS is deducted on the withdrawal amount for EPF withdrawal made before 5 years of continuous service. In case you want to withdraw your funds before 5 years of service but the withdrawal amount is less than Rs. 50,000, then TDS is not deducted
16. If your monthly basic salary is more than Rs 15,000, you can opt out of EPF and have an option to not be part of it and hence you will get all your salary in hand (without any deduction)
17. You cannot claim for EPS withdrawal, if your cumulative service period is more than 10 years. In such a scenario, you will start receiving EPS pension on attaining an age of 58 years