Payroll Compliance in India: The 2026 Checklist (PF, ESI, PT, TDS)

Indian payroll is rarely wrong because the maths is hard. It goes wrong because a statutory deadline slipped, a state's Professional Tax slab was out of date, or a challan was filed against the wrong month. Compliance is a calendar problem before it is a calculation problem.

This checklist covers the four statutory pillars every employer manages — and the deadlines that matter in the 2026 financial year.

1. Provident Fund (EPF)

Employers with 20 or more employees must register with the EPFO. The standard contribution is 12% of basic wages from both employee and employer, with the employer share split between EPF and the Employee Pension Scheme (EPS).

• Deposit contributions by the 15th of the following month.
• File the monthly ECR (Electronic Challan cum Return) before payment.
• Late deposits attract interest under Section 7Q plus damages under Section 14B.

2. Employees' State Insurance (ESI)

ESI applies to employees earning up to the wage ceiling in establishments covered by the ESIC. The current contribution is 0.75% from the employee and 3.25% from the employer.

• Contributions are due by the 15th of the following month.
• Contribution periods run April–September and October–March.
• An employee crossing the wage ceiling mid-period stays covered until the period ends.

3. Professional Tax (PT)

Professional Tax is levied by state governments, so both the slabs and the due dates differ from one state to the next. A business operating across Maharashtra, Karnataka and West Bengal is effectively running three PT rule-sets at once.

4. Tax Deducted at Source (TDS) on Salaries

Under Section 192, employers deduct TDS on salary based on each employee's projected annual income and declared investments. Accurate TDS depends on collecting and verifying IT declarations early in the year and reconciling them against proofs before the final quarter.

1. Deposit TDS by the 7th of the following month.
2. File quarterly returns in Form 24Q.
3. Issue Form 16 to employees by the statutory deadline after year-end.

How automation prevents penalties

Most compliance penalties are not deliberate — they come from manual re-keying between a payroll sheet and a government portal. A system that generates statutory exports directly from the pay run, keeps a per-state PT master, and tracks IT declarations end-to-end removes those hand-off errors. In MyBridge, statutory exports, PT slabs, a minimum wages master and IT declaration workflows all live inside the payroll module.