NEW DELHI — The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation has introduced a comprehensive transitional amnesty framework aimed at regularizing provident fund trusts that hold Income Tax recognition but lack formal statutory exemption orders under the Employees’ Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act. Alongside the trust regularisation initiative, the Union Ministry of Labour and Employment has rolled out the Employees’ Enrolment Campaign 2026, creating a dedicated pathway for establishments to voluntarily address historical compliance shortfalls and extend social security coverage to eligible workers excluded between April 1, 2009, and March 31, 2026.
Under the enrolment initiative, which remains open until October 31, 2026, employers can onboard previously omitted staff without penalising workers, allowing for the waiver of employee contributions where deductions were not made from wages at the time. To streamline registrations, participating employers must generate a face authentication-based Universal Account Number for each declared worker via the UMANG mobile application before completing formal documentation and contribution remittances through the Electronic Challan-cum-Return system.
For private provident fund trusts seeking formal exemption status, the retirement fund body has provided a six-month regularisation window running through December 28. To facilitate seamless onboarding, the scheme waives conventional operational prerequisites, including minimum employee headcount thresholds, baseline corpus limits, and the mandatory three-year continuous compliance record. Once their legal standing is retrospectively validated, establishments retain the option to either operate as an officially exempt trust or surrender the trust structure to transition into standard unexempt status directly administered by the retirement authority.
To ensure broad compliance and reach eligible entities, the organisation has coordinated outreach with professional bodies such as the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and engaged directly with the Income Tax Department. The social security organisation has urged revenue authorities to verify whether an establishment maintains valid coverage and exemption clearance under provident fund statutes prior to granting tax benefits, while concurrently requesting the revocation of existing tax recognition for trusts that continue to operate without statutory exemption approvals.
