The composite form that you need to fill for EPFwithdrawals, including any advance, will undergo a change to include partial withdrawal on account of unemployment
Salaried individuals, who contribute to the Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF), will soon be able to withdraw up to 75% of their EPF money in case they are out of a job for at least a month. The central board of trustees of Employees’s Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) that met last week decided that employees who have been unemployed for a month will be allowed to withdraw 75% of their EPF corpus. This is the cumulative corpus comprising your contributions, your employer’s contributions and the interest accrued.
Earlier the rules allowed you to withdraw the complete corpus if you were out of a job for more than two months, but this also meant you had to close your account. So in order to make EPF money liquid, and allowing you to keep your EPF account intact, EPFO decided to allow an advance against your EPF corpus to the tune of 75% on job loss and unemployment of a month.
But keep in mind that for now it’s only a decision taken by the board; it needs a statutory notification to be confirmed. Until that happens, we explain the process of withdrawal.
The process
The composite form that you need to fill for withdrawals, including any advance, will undergo a change to include partial withdrawal on account of unemployment. Currently, the composite form can be used for complete withdrawal, for which you had to fill up form 19. For withdrawal of pension amount under the Employees’ Pension Scheme, you had to fill form 10C, and for partial withdrawals for purposes like marriage, children’s education, medical expenditure and house construction, you had to fill form 31.
The composite form has collapsed all forms into one, but is categorised into two: Aadhaar and non-Aadhaar.
The Aadhaar-based composite form is meant for individuals who have activated their UAN and linked it with their Aadhaar and bank account numbers. Such employees can submit the claim online using the Aadhaar composite claim form, but keep in mind your UAN needs to be activated and seeded with details of your bank account number, PAN and Aadhaar and verified by the employer. Fill up the form and submit it online. You don’t need the employer’s intervention for this as the EPFO will already have your details including the date of exit that is required to be updated by the employer monthly. In case the details don’t match this process you will need to reach out to the employer.
The non-Aadhaar form can be used by people who have not seeded Aadhaar and activated their UAN yet. This form has to be signed by you and attested by your employer. The employer will submit this form with the EPF office. It should take about two weeks for settlement to go through.
