How To Withdraw EPF Funds In Case You Are Unemployed For A Month?

The provident fund body has been busy making changes to its different rules and provisions in respect of a subscriber's EPF account, so that it is made for investor-friendly in the hands of the investor while ensuring at the same time the sole purpose of its creation is not defeated.

And as a recent measure soon you will be allowed to withdraw a cumulative corpus amount of up to 75% in case you are out of job for more than a month. Salaried people contribute 12% of their basic pay into the EPF account which in the same proportion has to be contributed by the employed. Some of it though goes to the EPS or employee pension scheme. The withdrawal amount thus allowed hence would also include employer's contributions and the interest accrued in addition to your or employee's contribution.

Why this relaxed provision?

In a earlier scenario, members or subscribers of the EPF account were allowed to withdraw the entire accumulated corpus in a case when they remain out of job for 2 months. This simply meant closure of account but now to ensure the sole purpose i.e. to fund retirement necessities is not done away with in such a situation, the provision has been allowed to ensure that members can still continue to hold the account while they are on the hunt for the next lucrative move in their career.

Hence, this provision renders EPF contributions as well as earnings made on it more liquid.

How to withdraw EPF corpus in case of job loss?

Currently the form that you use in case of full withdrawal of EPF corpus i.e. the Composite form is likely to be changed to include the provision of partial withdrawal. For this you as a subscriber of EPF account need to fill in the form 19.

For partial withdrawals in relation to some specific purposes such as marriage, children's education, medical expenditure and house construction, the subscriber of EPF account is required to fill Form 31.

Again for the withdrawal of pension amount under EPS, you are required to fill in form 10C.

But here it is to be noted that since the launch of Aadhaar ID, the composite form that now accounts for all the forms has been segregated into two mainly Aadhaar and non-aadhaar composite form.

For making claims through composite aadhaar forms, the user needs to have activated their UAN or universal account number allotted by the fund body and link it to their bank account and aadhaar ID. Also there is a requisite that the details be verified by your employer, before you set to make withdrawal request online.

And in if you are among those who have not activated their UAN and linked it to PAN, aadhaar and bank account database, then you need to fill in the non-aadhaar composite form and get it signed by your employer. The employer then submits it to the EPF body which takes a fortnight for final settlement.

Notably, the statutory notification for the decision by the provident fund body is still pending.

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