Payroll obligations in Pune start with the first person you put on a salary, not at a headcount. A solo consultant in Kothrud who draws only profits carries a profession tax enrolment and nothing more. Put one salaried person on the muster and four clocks start: the salary deduction, TDS, a provident fund threshold and a state insurance threshold. Provident fund coverage attaches at twenty employees. State insurance reaches an establishment with ten or more persons. This page is for an employer somewhere on that line.
Which payroll obligations switch on at your Pune headcount?
Four registrations sit under a Pune payroll and they do not switch on together.
- Profession tax enrolment is the entity's own annual liability and exists from the day the business does, at ₹2,500 a year for a company or an LLP under its own Schedule I entry.
- Profession tax registration lets the employer take the tax out of salaries and deposit it, and section 5(3) wants that application within thirty days of becoming liable.
- Provident fund coverage attaches at twenty employees, and the Employees' Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 1952 is still in force alongside the Code on Social Security 2020.
- State insurance reaches an establishment with ten or more persons, and once that chapter applies it keeps applying even if your headcount later falls back.
A Shops and Establishments filing sits beside all of it. Since 1 October 2025 the Shops Act registration threshold in Maharashtra has stood at twenty workers. An establishment under that count files an intimation, and no registration certificate is issued to it. Which of those two your address falls under is something we check on the filing day rather than assume.
What does a missed payroll filing cost a Pune employer?
Rarely one number, and rarely in one place. A profession tax default surfaces as a notice from the Pune Profession Tax Office, which sits under the Additional Commissioner of State Tax, Zone 2. Only six locations in Maharashtra have a dedicated Profession Tax Office, so the hearing happens in the city rather than by post.
A provident fund shortfall lands with whichever of the four EPFO offices at Pune holds your establishment. Those four sit at Pune Cantonment, Akurdi, Hinjawadi and Viman Nagar, and the zonal office for the whole of Maharashtra outside Mumbai is stationed here as well. An underpaid state insurance contribution goes to the ESIC Sub Regional Office at Pune, whose published jurisdiction covers this district along with Solapur, Satara, Kolhapur and Sangli.
The TDS side hurts your people first. An employee in Baner whose Form 16 does not match what was deposited cannot file a clean return, and the correction lands back on your finance team.
Which dates govern the Pune payroll calendar?
Two of these are Maharashtra's own and the rest are national. The one that gets missed is the annual enrolment payment, which carries no return and no reminder.
| What falls due | Who it catches | When |
|---|---|---|
| Profession tax enrolment payment of ₹2,500 | The company, the LLP, a GST registered person, each partner in her own right | On or before 31 March of that year |
| Salary deduction of ₹200 a month | Employees drawing above the slab, with ₹300 taken in February | Every payroll cycle |
| Employer profession tax return | Any Maharashtra employer holding a registration certificate | Fifteen days earlier than before, by the notification of 28 February 2026 |
| Provident fund challan and ECR | Establishments at twenty employees | Monthly, to the EPFO office that holds your file |
| State insurance contribution | Establishments with ten or more persons | Monthly, through ESIC |
How often that employer return goes in depends on your previous year's profession tax liability, and the department publishes the periodicity list for each financial year. The Maharashtra Labour Welfare Fund takes a small half yearly contribution from both employer and employee, and we put the due dates on your compliance calendar.
How does the Maharashtra layer sit on your payroll?
Two certificates, not one. Section 5 of the Maharashtra State Tax on Professions, Trades, Callings and Employments Act, 1975 creates a certificate of enrolment for a person liable in her own right and a certificate of registration for an employer. Practitioners here call them PTEC and PTRC.
PTEC is the entity's own tax, with no return to file. A Maharashtra company, LLP, banking company, GST registered person, factory occupier, each partner of a firm or LLP and each HUF coparcener carries PTEC at ₹2,500 a year under its own Schedule I entry. Some other classes sit at lower Schedule I rates, and where more than one entry catches the same person the highest rate applies.
PTRC does a different job. It lets the employer take ₹200 a month out of a salary above the slab, ₹300 of it in February, and deposit what it has taken. So a Pune company with staff holds both, and every director carries a personal enrolment on top of the company's.
Women earning up to ₹25,000 a month are exempt from the salary deduction, in force from 1 April 2023. A woman director's own enrolment is untouched by that. Section 27A exempts some people from profession tax altogether, among them a person with a benchmark disability and anyone who has completed sixty five years.
Both certificates are applied for and paid on mahagst.gov.in, the Maharashtra Goods and Services Tax Department's own portal, and a Pune GSTIN carries the state code 27. The Profession Tax Office at Pune comes into it only for a notice, a hearing or a cancellation request.
What does payroll cost in Pune, and what do we need from you?
Payroll starts at ₹149, and the monthly figure follows headcount and how much statutory work sits under it. A five person office in Camp with one employer certificate and no provident fund cover is not the same job as a forty person unit at Chakan running EPF and state insurance.
Before the first cycle we need:
- Your profession tax enrolment and registration numbers, or the go ahead to apply for them
- EPFO and ESIC establishment codes and portal credentials, where they already exist
- A salary structure for each employee, with the tax regime that employee has declared
- Attendance, leave and variable pay for the month
- UAN and bank details for anyone who joined since the last filing
None of it needs a counter visit. For the service as it runs across the country, read the national payroll services guide. What a Pune file adds is the profession tax pair and the state Shops Act position, both of which we verify rather than assume.
Which Pune employers are running payroll with us?
- A wholesale trading firm off Budhwar Peth in Camp, paying eleven people, that needed the profession tax deduction printed on payslips before its bank would open a working capital file.
- The partners of that same firm, each carrying a personal enrolment at ₹2,500 a year quite apart from anything the firm deducts from its staff.
- A SaaS founder in Hinjawadi at nineteen people on roll, watching the twentieth hire because provident fund coverage attaches there.
- An employer never told which of the four EPFO offices holds its establishment file, who finds out when a notice arrives.
How we run your monthly payroll
- We read your registrations first: the two profession tax certificates, your provident fund and state insurance codes, and the Shops and Establishments position for your address.
- We build the salary structure and deduction map once and record the regime each employee has declared, so later cycles are arithmetic.
- Each month we take attendance and variable pay, compute net salary employee by employee, and send you a summary to approve before any money moves.
- On approval we release payslips, deposit the deductions, file the ECR with EPFO, pay the state insurance contribution and file the employer return on mahagst.gov.in when it falls due.
- At the year end we reconcile every deposit, issue Form 16 for each employee, and put the 31 March enrolment date on your compliance calendar.
Why LegalX India for payroll in Pune?
Payroll here is a chartered accountant's file, not a spreadsheet's. Draft is where Maharashtra's rules under the four labour codes still sat through 2026, even though the codes themselves commenced on 21 November 2025. The operative position keeps shifting, so we track it rather than reprint it.
Our Pune office is at Yashwant Nagar, Near Bharatiya Samajseva, Yerwada, Pune 411006, and the engagement runs online. LegalX India has run filings for over 15,000 businesses, and a payroll enquiry gets a callback within 30 minutes. Where our office sits decides nothing for your file: your EPFO office, your profession tax officer and your Shops Act Facilitator follow your own registered address.