February is the month Mumbai payroll sheets quietly go wrong. Maharashtra's profession tax deduction runs at ₹200 a month for employees above the salary threshold, except in February, when it becomes ₹300. A sheet locked to a flat ₹200 finishes the year ₹100 short per employee, the annual total stops matching ₹2,500, and the gap surfaces later as a query from the department. June and December then bring the Maharashtra Labour Welfare Fund contributions, a line most employers never put in the calendar at all. Payroll in Mumbai is a calendar problem before it is a calculation problem, and the local calendar is longer than the national one.
What will payroll actually cost a Mumbai employer?
The service fee first: LegalX India runs payroll from ₹149, and the quote is fixed in writing once headcount and registrations are known. Statutory outgoings sit on top, and those are identical whoever runs your payroll. The company pays its own ₹2,500 enrolment every year, each director pays the same in personal capacity, and the amounts taken from salaries move through their own challans alongside EPF and ESI. What actually varies between providers is the cost of a missed month: interest, late fees and the days spent rebuilding registers to answer a notice. The national machinery of TDS, Form 24Q and Form 16 is covered in our complete payroll services guide for India; this page stays on the layer Mumbai adds.
Do the headcount thresholds catch your team?
Three numbers decide most of the Mumbai payroll stack, and they bite at different sizes:
- EPF applies once you employ 20 people, with registration made online through Shram Suvidha
- ESI applies from 10 employees, and insured staff use ESIC dispensaries and hospitals across Mumbai, Thane and Navi Mumbai
- Profession tax deduction starts with your first employee above the salary threshold, and women earning up to ₹25,000 a month stay exempt
A diagnostics lab in Ghatkopar with 14 technicians sits inside ESI but below the EPF line. Hire six more and EPF arrives, and so does the Shops and Establishments registration requirement, which begins at 20 workers. Headcount growth is the most common way a Mumbai employer walks into a compliance nobody planned for, so we track your roll against every threshold as part of the cycle.
How does the Maharashtra layer of payroll actually work?
This is where national providers stumble, because no other state structures it quite this way. Maharashtra levies profession tax under its own Act of 1975, and both certificates live on mahagst.gov.in. Practitioners call them PTEC and PTRC, and they are two different things. PTEC is the enrolment: the company's own flat ₹2,500 a year, the constitutional ceiling, with no return attached. PTRC is the employer certificate that authorises deduction from salaries and deposit with the state, with return frequency set by the previous year's liability.
The annual totals coincide at ₹2,500 by arithmetic accident, which is exactly why so many teams treat the two as one registration. A company with staff needs both, plus a personal enrolment for each director, and the enrolment money is due by the annual date whether or not a single salary was paid that year. The Labour Welfare Fund sits on top: small employee and employer shares paid to the Maharashtra Labour Welfare Board every June and December. Most missed Welfare Fund payments we see were not decisions; the employer simply never knew the line existed.
Which records matter most for a Mumbai payroll file?
When a department query lands, the file answers it, not your memory. We maintain for every client:
- Salary registers and month wise computation sheets for every cycle we run
- Challans and acknowledgements for each statutory payment, filed the day they are generated
- Certificate and code numbers: both profession tax registrations, the EPFO establishment code and the ESIC number
- Attendance, joiner and exit records that explain every variation from the previous month
Multi state teams add a wrinkle. A SaaS founder in Powai with engineers in three states deducts Maharashtra profession tax only for the people working in Maharashtra, and the registers have to show who sits where. That mapping is precisely what a national template payroll gets wrong first.
Which dates and slabs govern payroll in Mumbai?
Set against the national TDS and EPF calendar, the Maharashtra additions look like this:
| Obligation | Who it touches | Amount or timing |
|---|---|---|
| Company enrolment | Every company, and each director personally | ₹2,500 a year by the annual due date |
| Salary deduction | Employees above the threshold | ₹200 a month, ₹300 in February |
| Welfare Fund | Employer and employee shares | June and December each year |
| EPF and ESI | Teams of 20 and 10 upward | Monthly, on the national portals |
| Deduction returns | Employers holding the certificate | Frequency set by last year's liability |
One team should own both calendars. Splitting the national filings from the state ones is exactly how the February step and the December half go missing, because each vendor assumes the other has them.
What trips Mumbai payroll teams up most often?
Almost every payroll we take over carries at least one of the same five errors:
- Treating the two profession tax certificates as one registration, so deducted amounts get deposited while the company's own enrolment is never paid.
- Running a flat ₹200 deduction across all twelve months and finishing the year ₹100 short per employee.
- Deducting from women employees earning up to ₹25,000 a month, who are exempt from the deduction.
- Skipping the June and December Welfare Fund halves because EPFO and ESIC looked like the whole picture.
- Filing on time but losing the challans, so one routine notice costs days of reconstruction.
None of these are exotic failures. They come from running Mumbai payroll on a template built for a state with no enrolment certificate and no February step. The four labour codes, in force since 21 November 2025, add a settling period on top; how they interact with state rules is still being worked out, and we track that so you do not have to.
Why run Mumbai payroll through LegalX India?
Because the state layer is home ground, not an afterthought. Our team files profession tax, Welfare Fund, EPF and ESI for Mumbai clients every single cycle, from diagnostics labs in Ghatkopar to warehousing floors in Bhiwandi. The calendar above sits in our systems, not in one accountant's head. More than 15,000 businesses have used LegalX India, and the service holds a 4.8 Google rating. Everything runs online through the government portals. If you would rather sit across a table first, the Mumbai office is on the second floor of Haware Fantasia Business Park in Vashi; your registrations and officers always follow your own registered address, never ours. Ask for a quote and an expert calls you back within 30 minutes with the scope and a fixed price.