New Delhi: The Employees Provident Fund, or EPF, is an important aspect of any corporate employee’s working life, and there are a few things to know about it. Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), a government-backed retirement agency, is a programme that saves a portion of an employee’s pay as well as a portion of the employer’s contribution and distributes it after retirement.
On that topic, you should be aware that linking your Aadhaar card with your EPFO-issued Universal Account Number is critical. The UAN is a one-of-a-kind number that is assigned to each employee and remains with them indefinitely.
The EPFO has extended the deadline for linking UANs to Aadhaar numbers. The deadline has been pushed back to November 30, 2021. The old deadline for connecting the numbers was August 31, 2021.
The EPFO announced the most recent date on November 15 of this year. The Employees Provident Fund (EPF) account must now be linked to the Aadhaar card, thanks to a recent revision in section 142 of the Code of Social Security 2020. The EPFO had stated that it would take effect in June of this year.
“In partial modification of the Circular No. WSU/15(1)2019/ATR/529 dated 15.06.2021 under reference, it is informed that the date of completing the seeding and verification of Aadhaar with UAN, is hereby extended till 30.11.2021 and accordingly, the date in Para 1 of the referred Circular dated 15.06.2021 mentioned as 01.09.2021 may be read as 01.12.2021,” the EPF said in a circular.
However, if you do not link your UAN to your Aadhaar number, you may face a number of repercussions. For starters, if you don’t link the accounts, you won’t receive the employer’s contribution.
The filing requirements for the Electronic Challan Cumulative Return have also been amended by the retiring authority (ECR). EPFO stated that the company can only submit for employees who have linked their Aadhaar to their PF UAN. “After the Aadhaar seeding procedure is completed, the employer can file a separate ECR for non-Aadhaar seeded UAN,” the regulatory authority stated.
Employees will also experience a payment delay until the accounts are linked and the data is approved by the employers and authorities. Furthermore, they will be unable to withdraw PF funds from their accounts. Employees are also ineligible for COVID-19 advances and insurance benefits tied to PF accounts, which were announced earlier this year.
