PF is probably the first scary term you hear about when you start your employment journey. The PF amount is deducted from your salary, and you don’t like it. Only at a later stage do you understand how good an investment strategy it is. Because of its E-E-E (exempt-exempt-exempt) nature, the Employee Provident Fund (EPF) is an excellent investment option for any paid employee.
It means that contributions to EPF, interest earned from EPF, and withdrawals from EPF after five years are all tax-free. In the later stages of your employment, you might also need to transfer or withdraw the amount in your PF account. We’ll go over how to make a PF transfer online in this article.
Why should you transfer your PF?
When individuals begin their careers by accepting work with a PF-registered organisation, they will be registered for PF purposes. Both the employee and the employer contribute to the employee’s PF and accrue interest until withdrawal. Furthermore, switching jobs for various reasons with or without a gap is not unusual, especially early or mid-year. What happens to the employee’s existing PF account with the previous company in such circumstances?
In such instances, the employee will have two options:
- If the employee is on a break for more than 60 days, the employee’s contribution with interest can be withdrawn;
- The balance can be transferred to the present employer.
Transferring the PF fund balance rather than withdrawing it is always a superior option for retirement savings. It’s also tax-wise, because withdrawal of PF after five years of continuous work is subject to tax.Before transferring the PF online, maintain the following information or documents in hand.
While PF transfers were previously allowed online using the ‘Online Transfer Claim Portal,’ the Process has been updated and relocated to the ‘unified portal’ with the advent of UAN.
However, to make an online PF transfer, please make sure that you have the following information:
- The member’s UAN must be activated at the UAN portal, and the mobile number used to activate it must likewise be active.
- The employee’s bank account and IFSC code should be seeded against the UAN. When filing a transfer claim, it is unnecessary to link an Aadhar number and a PAN against a UAN.
- The employer should have approved the e-KYC.
- In EPFO, the previous/current employer should have authorised signatories who are digitally registered.
- An employee’s PF account number from past and current employment should be put into the EPFO database.
- Only one transfer request is accepted against the prior member ID.
- Personal information and information on PF accounts should be accurate in EPFO.
Online PF transfer procedure
We now know that PF transfers can be done electronically, and all the necessary criteria must be met. With the help of screenshots, let us walk through the procedure step by step:
Step 1: Use your UAN number and password to log in to the Unified portal (member interface).
Step 2: After logging in, go to Online Services and select ‘One Member – One EPF Account (Transfer Request)’.
Step 3: Check your personal information and PF account for your current job:
Step 4: After clicking ‘Get details’ below, your prior employer’s PF account details will appear.
Step 5: Depending on the availability of an authorised signatory with a DSC, you can choose either your prior or current employer to attest to the claim form. Select one of the employers and enter your member id/UAN:
Step 6: Next, select ‘Get OTP’ to obtain an OTP to your UAN-registered cellphone number, then input and submit the OTP.
By using the employer interface of the unified site, your employer will digitally accept your EPF transfer request. Fill out Form 13 with your information, including your old and present employer’s PF numbers, and then download the transfer claim (pdf format). Within ten days, submit a physical signed copy of the online PF transfer claim form to the selected employer.
You can get your PF account transferred or withdrawn quickly by following these simple steps. The portal’s user interface is quite good, and you should not face any difficulties in completing the procedure. The Process has become relatively fast and smooth over the years, and transferring or withdrawing money from PF is no longer the tedious task it used to be a decade ago.
