Deduct profession tax from a Bengaluru payroll, file the monthly statement, then forget the proof of payment, and the statement counts as never filed. That is not a technicality. The Act says a statement sent without proof of payment is not deemed to have been duly filed. The money leaves your bank and the default still sits on the department's record. Most payroll trouble here looks exactly like that. Nobody stole anything and no calculation was wrong. One step went in the wrong order because payroll was somebody's fourth job that week.
What does a late or wrong Bengaluru payroll actually cost?
The employer carries the liability, not the employee. Section 4 of the Karnataka profession tax Act makes an employer liable to pay the tax on behalf of its staff whether or not the deduction was made. Miss a designer who crossed the salary line in August and you still owe that money in March.
Then the machinery behind it. If a penalty is imposed under section 12 it is ten percent of the tax due, and it is on top of the interest payable under section 11. Applying late for the employer's registration certificate carries ₹1,000, and ₹500 for any other person, after a hearing. None of these figures is large alone. They get expensive because they accumulate quietly across a year before anybody opens the file.
A second trap catches busy founders. Since the 2025 amendment to the rules, an order, summons or notice may be served by email to the address you gave at registration, or by being published on the departmental portal. A company that signed up with a founder's old address and never logs in has still been validly served.
Who is caught by this in Bengaluru, and at what salary?
Deduction starts at a monthly salary of ₹25,000. The Schedule wording is "and above", which puts a person on exactly ₹25,000 inside the net, not outside it. That wording decides thousands of payslips across Bengaluru every month, and homegrown spreadsheets get it wrong more than anything else.
Below the line there is nothing to deduct. Once you are past it the business needs a registration certificate for what it withholds from staff, and separately an enrolment certificate for its own liability. Two certificates, two purposes, and Bengaluru clients regularly arrive holding just one of them.
- A D2C fashion label in Jayanagar with eight salaried people and a bench of freelancers. The freelancers sit outside the payroll, so nothing is withheld from them, but the label itself still enrols and pays.
- A funded software company in Koramangala where nearly every hire crosses the line, and one missed employee surfaces in a diligence data room rather than an assessment order.
- A studio that quietly opened a second desk in Whitefield and now has two places of business to account for.
- Any employer whose headcount on 31 December decides a welfare payment nobody put in the budget.
Which department ends up holding your payroll file?
Three of them, and they are not the same office. Profession tax is administered by the Karnataka Commercial Taxes Department, and the cycle runs on e-Prerana at ptax.karnataka.gov.in. Under a Government Order of 4 February 2025 the process is online only, no fee is payable on registration or enrolment, and the certificate is granted on successful submission. It carries no seal and no signature, which is deliberate, and worth telling your banker before somebody rejects it. Employer registration has been electronic since 1 April 2022, with the PAN or TAN validated against the income tax database and the signatory by Aadhaar OTP.
Employees' State Insurance sits somewhere else entirely. The regional office for the state is at Bengaluru, and there are five sub regional offices, two of them inside the city. The Peenya office takes in Malleshwaram, Peenya and Hebbal. The Bangalore South office at Bommasandra takes in HSR Layout, Bommanahalli and Bommasandra. Ten or more persons on the payroll pulls an establishment into coverage, a seasonal factory aside. That test now comes from the First Schedule to the Code on Social Security, 2020. Once covered, an establishment stays covered even if the headcount later falls. The wage ceiling is fixed by notification, and we confirm the current notified ceiling before we register you.
The welfare contribution goes to a third body, the Karnataka Labour Welfare Board, with the annual statement filed with its Welfare Commissioner.
Which dates govern a payroll year in Bengaluru?
| Filing | When it falls due |
|---|---|
| Monthly profession tax statement in Form 5-A | Within 20 days of the end of the month, with proof of payment |
| Employer profession tax return in Form 5 | Within 60 days of the end of the financial year |
| Enrolment certificate payment | 30 April, or within one month of enrolling if you enrolled later |
| Welfare fund contribution | 15 January, for everyone on the register on 31 December |
| Welfare statement in Form D | 15 January, to the Welfare Commissioner |
Two rows trip people up. The monthly instrument is a statement and not a return; the Act reserves the word return for the annual filing, and using it correctly on a call saves ten minutes. The welfare deduction, at ₹50 from the employee against ₹100 from the employer, may only be recovered from December wages. A payroll that spreads it across twelve months is doing it wrong, and a later month needs the Inspector's written permission.
Three of the last four years brought a separate order pushing the 30 April enrolment date. The date in the Act has not moved. An extension granted for one year settles nothing about the year that follows, so we file to 30 April and check each year for the order in force.
What do payroll services cost in Bengaluru, and what sits inside the fee?
Our payroll service starts at ₹149. What that buys is a monthly cycle, not a single filing: inputs collected, gross to net run, payslips issued, and the statutory filings made under your own certificate number.
The government side of the bill is smaller than most people expect. There is no fee at all for profession tax registration or enrolment, so if somebody quoted you a government charge for that certificate, there was never one to pay. What costs money is the tax, the interest once it runs late, and the hours a finance lead burns across three portals. For scope and the national picture, read payroll services in India explained.
Here is the cycle we run every month:
- Collect attendance, joiners, exits and salary revisions by the 25th.
- Run gross to net for each employee, including the profession tax line and the insurance and provident fund workings.
- Send you the register to approve before a single rupee is released.
- Issue payslips, then file Form 5-A with proof of payment by the 20th of the following month.
- Close the year with Form 16 and the employer's annual return.
Where does Karnataka profession tax sit alongside your payroll?
Alongside it, not inside it. What you withhold from salaries is one liability. What the business owes on its own account is a separate one, and for almost everybody that is a flat ₹2,500 a year.
The deduction rate changed on 1 April 2025 and a great many payroll templates are still stale. It is now ₹200 a month for eleven months and ₹300 for February, totalling ₹2,500. If your software shows one figure for all twelve months, February prints wrong.
- One business, one payment. Several Schedule entries may catch you at once, say as a company and as a registrant under the Karnataka Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017. Any single one of those entries carries the liability, so the payment is ₹2,500 once.
- Open a second address and the Schedule treats each place of business as its own person: Jayanagar at ₹2,500, Whitefield at ₹2,500. Premises used only as a godown for storing goods add no charge.
- No tax is payable for a year where the person does not work more than one hundred and twenty days in it, which matters for part year consultants.
- From 1 April 2026, payment does the work of the annual filing for an enrolled person: settle the year's tax and the return counts as filed. Employers are outside that relief and keep filing monthly and annually.
One question comes up weekly. In Karnataka the company itself enrols and pays ₹2,500 a year. Whether a director also needs a separate certificate depends on how that director is paid and what else they do. We look at the individual position first, rather than filing for a whole board by default.
Why does a Bengaluru payroll need one team rather than three?
Because payroll here is three regimes wearing one name, and the failure is nearly always a date rather than a calculation. Our CA and CS team runs the monthly cycle, keeps both certificates live, and files each piece where it has to go. Everything is handled online; our own Bengaluru office is in Kanaka Nagar if you would rather sit across a table. Your jurisdiction follows your registered address and not ours, and we confirm it before anything is filed.