Online EPFO Withdrawal Coming
1) Retirement fund body EPFO currently receives close to 1 crore applications manually for settlement of withdrawal claim, pension fixation or getting group insurance benefit by deceased persons.
2) EPFO has an ambitious plan to settle the claims within a few hours after filing of application.
3) Currently, the PF body settles most of the claims within the stipulated 20 days.
4) Under a pilot scheme, the provident fund body has already connected its around 50 field offices with the central server. The PF body plans to link all 123 offices with the central server so that subscribers can be provided services online.
5) EPFO has now made furnishing of Aadhaar by subscribers mandatory. The body recently extended the deadline for submitting Aadhaar for its subscribers and pensioners till March 31, 2017.
6) "Furnishing of Aadhaar seeded bank accounts as well as Aadhaar by EPF members would facilitate better identification as well as consolidation of EPF accounts linked with various spells of employment of EPF members. This would allow offering any time anywhere services to EPF members," the PF body said in a statement.
7) Provident fund (PF) is meant for saving towards retirement years. Financial planners don't advise withdrawal from the corpus before retirement. According to provident fund norms, 12 per cent of an employee's salary goes into the fund along with a matching contribution from the employer. But 8.33 per cent of that goes into Employees' Pension Scheme.
8) EPFO or Employees' Provident Fund Organisation every year announces interest rate to be paid on the accumulated provident fund corpus.
9) PF money can be withdrawn after two months from the cessation of employment. The application form in this regard can be filed with PF authorities, or through the employer.
10) To encourage long-term savings, the government has formulatedtax laws accordingly. If the withdrawal from a recognised PF happens after five years of continuous employment, it attracts no tax liability. more