The EPF Scheme, 1952 is gone.
Your trust rules probably still cite it.
The Employees’ Provident Funds Scheme, 2026 was notified under the Code on Social Security, 2020 and replaced the 1952 Scheme outright. For exempted establishments it is not a tidy-up — exemption became a renewable term, interest became capped, and three new forms became your board’s responsibility.
45-minute review of your trust against the 2026 Scheme. No cost, no obligation, no software required.
Dates your board is already accountable for
EEC, 2026 closes
One-time window to enrol employees previously left out of EPF.
AMNESTY & VISHWAS close
Regularise exemption status; settle Section 14B damages at reduced rates.
Continuation of exemption
Existing exempted establishments must apply — clock runs from 8 May 2026.
What actually changed for exempted trusts
Eight areas where the 2026 Scheme does something the 1952 Scheme did not. If your trust deed, your rules or your software were written against the left-hand column, they need work.
| Area | EPF Scheme, 1952 | EPF Scheme, 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Exemption status | Granted under Section 17 of the EPF & MP Act, 1952 and treated in practice as permanent. | Granted under Section 143 of the Code on Social Security, 2020. A fresh exemption order runs for three years. |
| Continuation & renewal | No renewal cycle. Once exempt, always exempt. | Existing exempted establishments must apply for continuation within two years of the Social Security (Central) Rules, 2026 — i.e. from 8 May 2026. Extensions are applied for on the portal at least six months before expiry, and are refused where net worth has stayed negative for three or more consecutive years. |
| Interest declaration | The Board declared a rate; the working convention was simply to match or beat the EPFO rate. | Interest must be credited in tandem with income the trust actually earned, subject to a ceiling of two percentage points above the statutory benchmark rate. Paragraph 13(9) requires the Board of Trustees to declare the rate annually. |
| Losses | No prescribed recoupment clock. | Losses from fraud, defalcation or a “wrong investment decision” must be made good by the employer — principal and interest — within two months of the loss or by the end of the financial year, whichever is earlier. |
| Returns & governance | Forms 3A, 6A, 10, 13 and 31 under the 1952 Scheme. | Form-II returns filed digitally, Form-III trustee meeting minutes, and a Form-IV written undertaking to the Regional PF Commissioner. |
| Member communication | Statement and passbook practice varied widely between trusts. | PF Trust Rules must be circulated to members, translated into the language of the majority of employees, and statements of account issued within two months of the close of the financial year. |
| Record keeping | Spreadsheets and paper ledgers were tolerated in practice. | Trust accounts are to be maintained digitally. |
| Corporate actions | A merger, demerger or amalgamation effectively put exemption status at risk of automatic revocation. | Exemption status following a corporate action is determined by a competent legal forum — a departure from automatic revocation. |
Summarised from the Employees’ Provident Funds Scheme, 2026 (notified 29 June 2026, published 1 July 2026) and the Social Security (Central) Rules, 2026. This page is guidance, not legal advice — confirm your trust’s position with your legal and actuarial advisers.
Each new obligation, and what handles it
myPF Software was built for exempted trusts specifically — not adapted from a payroll product. Here is the mapping.
Continuation and three-yearly renewal applications
Renewal-ready filing pack
Generate the continuation pack from live trust data — Form-II returns, Form-III trustee minutes, the Form-IV undertaking and the supporting compliance evidence — rather than assembling it from mailboxes six months before expiry.
Interest credited in tandem with income earned, capped at benchmark + 2%
Income-linked interest engine
Member-wise interest is computed from actual portfolio income and checked against the declared rate before the Board signs it off, so a rate the portfolio did not earn never reaches a member ledger.
Trust accounts maintained digitally
Digital trust accounts
A complete member ledger with contribution, loan, advance and settlement history, with the audit trail an inspection or a statutory auditor will ask for.
Statements of account within two months of financial-year close
Two-month member statements
Year-end statements produced for every member in one run, and published to the self-service portal so members stop opening tickets to ask for a balance.
PF Trust Rules circulated to members in the majority language
Rules circulation & translation trail
Publish the current rules to every member through the portal and keep a dated record of who received which version — the evidence a renewal application needs.
Prescribed allocation limits and the loss-recoupment clock
Investment norm monitoring
Category-wise allocation tracking against EPFO-prescribed limits with maturity alerts, so an allocation drift is caught while it is still a rebalancing decision and not a loss the employer has two months to make good.
Three windows that close this year
The 2026 Scheme arrived alongside three special initiatives. Two of them shut on the same December date.
AMNESTY, 2026
Apply by 28 December 2026- Who it is for
- PF trusts recognised under the Income Tax Act, 1961 but without a formal exemption order under Section 17 or Section 143.
- What it does
- A one-time window to regularise exemption status retrospectively, with the minimum employee-strength, corpus-size and three-year compliance requirements relaxed. Afterwards the establishment may stay exempt or move to EPFO.
EPFO has been working through ICAI and the Income Tax Department to identify eligible trusts — your auditor may hear about your eligibility before you do.
Full guide to AMNESTY, 2026VISHWAS, 2026
Settle by 28 December 2026- Who it is for
- Employers carrying damages proceedings under Section 14B — ongoing, pre-adjudication or unpaid.
- What it does
- A one-time settlement of penal damages at materially reduced rates, applied for through the EPFO portal.
Worth a look even if the exposure is old — legacy 14B liabilities are exactly what surfaces during a renewal or continuation review.
See how VISHWAS pairs with AMNESTYEEC, 2026
Act by 31 October 2026- Who it is for
- Employers who left eligible employees out of EPF enrolment.
- What it does
- The Employees’ Enrolment Campaign gives a one-time option to enrol those employees under defined conditions.
Relevant to exempted establishments with contract or seasonal workforces where coverage was applied inconsistently.
EPF Scheme 2026 Gap Assessment
Bring your trust deed, last annual return and current interest declaration. We walk through the 2026 Scheme clause by clause against how your trust actually runs today, and you leave with a written gap list — whether or not you ever buy anything from us.
- Whether your continuation application is due, and what it needs to contain
- Where your trust deed and PF Trust Rules still reference the 1952 Scheme
- Whether your declared interest rate sits inside the benchmark + 2% ceiling
- What Form-II, Form-III and Form-IV will require from your current records
- Whether AMNESTY, 2026 or VISHWAS, 2026 applies to your establishment
- A written summary you can take to the Board of Trustees
EPF Scheme 2026: common questions
- Does the EPF Scheme, 2026 replace the EPF Scheme, 1952?
- Yes. The Employees’ Provident Funds Scheme, 2026 was notified under the Code on Social Security, 2020 on 29 June 2026 and published in the Official Gazette on 1 July 2026, replacing the 1952 Scheme. The 12% contribution rate was retained.
- Is our existing exemption still valid, or do we have to reapply?
- Existing exempted establishments are required to apply for continuation of exempted status within two years of the notification of the Social Security (Central) Rules, 2026 — that clock runs from 8 May 2026. Separately, a fresh exemption order is valid for three years, and an extension must be applied for on the portal at least six months before it expires.
- What is the new interest ceiling for an exempted PF trust?
- Interest must be credited in tandem with the income the trust actually earned, subject to a ceiling of two percentage points above the statutory benchmark rate. Under paragraph 13(9) the Board of Trustees declares the rate annually, commensurate with income earned during the relevant year. The EPF rate for FY 2025-26 was kept at 8.25%.
- What are Form-II, Form-III and Form-IV?
- They are the governance artefacts the 2026 Scheme expects from an exempted trust: Form-II is the return, filed digitally; Form-III carries the minutes of trustee meetings; Form-IV is a written undertaking to the Regional PF Commissioner to abide by the conditions for grant of exemption. They sit alongside, and in practice displace the framing of, the Forms 3A and 6A most trusts still organise their year around.
- What is AMNESTY, 2026 and does it apply to us?
- AMNESTY, 2026 is a one-time window, closing 28 December 2026, for PF trusts that hold Income Tax recognition but do not have a formal exemption order under Section 17 of the EPF & MP Act, 1952 or Section 143 of the Code on Social Security, 2020. It allows retrospective regularisation with the minimum employee-strength, corpus-size and three-year compliance requirements relaxed. If you are not certain which category your trust is in, that is exactly what the gap assessment resolves.
- What happens if a trust makes a loss on an investment?
- Losses arising from fraud, defalcation or a wrong investment decision are to be made good by the employer, with principal and interest recouped within two months of the date of the loss or by the end of the financial year, whichever is earlier. The scope of “wrong investment decision” has not been fully clarified, which is why allocation monitoring and a documented investment decision trail matter more than they used to.
- Does the ₹25,000 wage ceiling change anything for an exempted trust?
- The Union Cabinet approved raising the EPFO wage ceiling from ₹15,000 to ₹25,000 per month on 16 September 2026 — the first revision in twelve years, expected to bring around 51 lakh additional workers into mandatory coverage nationally. For an exempted trust it means more members on the ledger, a larger contribution liability and a larger corpus to allocate against the prescribed investment limits. Watch for the implementing notification for the effective date.
- Should we simply surrender the exemption instead?
- It is a legitimate option, and the 2026 Scheme is prompting a lot of boards to re-run the maths — renewal filings, the interest ceiling and the loss-recoupment exposure are all new inputs that did not exist when the original decision was made. The honest answer depends on your member count, your portfolio performance against the benchmark and the administrative cost you are carrying. We will give you a straight read in the gap assessment even where the answer is to migrate to EPFO.
Go deeper on the 2026 Scheme
The clause-by-clause read, the interest ceiling your board has to work inside, and the three filings that replace the old forms.
EPF Scheme 2026 vs EPF Scheme 1952: What Actually Changed for Exempted Trusts
The EPF Scheme, 1952 was replaced outright on 29 June 2026. This is the clause-by-clause comparison exempted PF trust administrators have been asking for — what carried over, what changed, and what has no equivalent in the old Scheme at all.
Read the postEPF Scheme 2026The New 2% Interest Ceiling: What Your Board Can and Cannot Declare
Under the EPF Scheme, 2026 an exempted trust's interest rate must track the income it actually earned, capped at two percentage points above the statutory benchmark — and the Board must declare it annually under paragraph 13(9). Here is the arithmetic, and the surplus question nobody is asking.
Read the postFilingForm-II, Form-III and Form-IV: The Three Filings Every Exempted Trust Now Owes
The EPF Scheme, 2026 introduces three statutory artefacts for exempted establishments — a digital Form-II return, Form-III trustee minutes and a Form-IV undertaking to the RPFC. Who signs each one, what evidence attaches, and why Form-III is the one that catches trusts out.
Read the postFind out where your trust stands
Most trust administrators we speak to have read a headline about the 2026 Scheme and nothing about what it asks of them specifically. Forty-five minutes fixes that.