The document that decides a PF and ESIC file in Pune is the wage register. It carries each person's date of joining, the split between basic wages and allowances, and the head count on the day the establishment crossed a statutory line. Build it right and the monthly filing is arithmetic. Build it loosely and every later filing repeats the error, because EPFO and ESIC read the register you filed, not the one you meant to file. An auto component unit at Chakan that opens a second shift, and a cafe at Koregaon Park that staffs up for the season, both cross a threshold on a payroll date. Neither of them gets a warning first.
Does PF and ESIC actually apply to your Pune business?
Two thresholds, running in opposite directions. EPF coverage is at twenty employees. The Employees' Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 1952 is still in force, being the one item of section 164(1) of the Code on Social Security 2020 that the commencement notification left out. ESI coverage is ten or more persons other than a seasonal factory, fixed by section 1(4) of the Code on Social Security 2020 read with its First Schedule. A proviso reaches notified hazardous or life threatening occupations even with a single employee. This is a national threshold, not a state extension, and it reaches a Pune shop, restaurant, clinic or school directly.
Three consequences follow, and most Pune employers meet them late.
- ESI applies below a monthly wage ceiling set by the Central Government, and we confirm the ceiling in force on your filing date.
- Once a Chapter applies, section 1(8) keeps it applying even if the headcount later falls below the threshold.
- The Employees' State Insurance Act 1948 stands repealed with effect from 21 November 2025, so its section 1(5) state extension framing is gone.
What goes wrong when a Pune employer gets this wrong?
The correction never arrives as a polite email. It arrives as a notice from the office holding your file, and in Pune that office is not obvious. Pune has four EPFO Regional Offices, not one: Pune Cantonment, Akurdi, Hinjawadi and Viman Nagar. Your establishment is allotted to one of them, EPFO publishes no area allocation table, and we settle the question before anything is filed. EPFO also stations a zonal office at Pune under an Additional Central Provident Fund Commissioner, so an escalation on a local file need not leave the city.
The insurance side is easier to place. An employer here sits with the ESIC Sub Regional Office, Pune, whose published jurisdiction is the Pune Region: Pune, Solapur, Satara, Kolhapur and Sangli districts. What is less settled is the law underneath. The four labour codes were commenced on 21 November 2025. Maharashtra's own rules under the codes were still at draft stage in 2026. State draft rules went out for the Code on Wages and the Industrial Relations Code in April 2026 and for the Social Security Code in May 2026, so we track the position on every payroll we run.
Which dates and slabs govern the monthly run?
Nothing on this calendar is negotiable, and one missed date costs more than a year of our fee. This is what an employer with payroll in the city actually keeps.
| Filing | When it falls due | Who it catches |
|---|---|---|
| EPF ECR and challan | By the 15th of the following month | Establishments at twenty employees and above |
| ESI contribution | Monthly, on the same payroll run | Establishments at ten persons and above |
| ESI periodic return | April and October | Every covered establishment |
| PTRC return | Fifteen days earlier than before, from 2026 | Every employer deducting profession tax |
| PTEC payment | On or before 31 March each year | The entity itself and each director |
| Labour Welfare Fund | Half yearly, on dates we calendar for you | Establishments the 1953 Act covers |
PTRC return due dates moved forward by fifteen days in 2026, by a Finance Department notification of 28 February 2026 amending rule 11(3). That notification amends rule 11(3) only, so the PTEC annual date remains 31 March.
How does the Maharashtra layer sit on top of PF and ESIC?
Maharashtra levies profession tax under the Maharashtra State Tax on Professions, Trades, Callings and Employments Act, 1975. Both certificates are administered on mahagst.gov.in. That is the whole of the shared statute, and what decides a Pune payroll is which of the two certificates does what.
PTRC is the employer's authority to deduct profession tax from salaries and deposit it. Above the slab threshold that is ₹200 out of each salary, ₹300 in February, and ₹2,500 across the year. A woman earning ₹25,000 a month or less carries no PTRC deduction at all, and that exemption has run since 1 April 2023. It shows on the first payroll at a Koregaon Park restaurant with a mostly women floor team. PTEC is the other certificate entirely: the entity's own annual liability, ₹2,500 under its own Schedule I entry, with no return to file. The PTEC annual due date is 31 March.
Pune keeps its own Profession Tax Office, one of just six in the state. Both certificates are applied for, paid and downloaded on mahagst.gov.in; the physical office matters for notices, hearings and cancellation, not for the filing. 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.
What does this cost in Pune, and what do we need from you?
Running compliance starts at ₹999 a month, and that is a fixed figure rather than a charge per filing. Registration is quoted separately, because taking over a file with arrears already sitting on it is different work from opening a clean establishment. What we need back from you is short, and it is the same list every month.
- The employee master, with dates of joining, dates of exit and the wage break up.
- The attendance and wage register for the month, in whatever format your payroll produces.
- Bank details and the authorised signatory's digital signature credentials.
- Contractor details wherever labour comes through an agency, so the codes can be reconciled against your own register.
Contract labour deserves its own line. A principal employer takes a registration certificate under the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act 1970, with the Assistant Commissioner of Labour as designated officer. A Chakan plant running three agencies usually meets that at an inspection rather than at onboarding.
Which Pune employers are filing this every month?
- An auto component manufacturer at Chakan, in an MIDC notified industrial area in Khed tahsil, that crosses twenty on the register the month a second shift starts.
- A restaurant and cafe operator at Koregaon Park, inside PMC limits, whose count moves with the season and who wants the ESI position fixed before the next payroll.
- An employer whose file sits with one of the four EPFO offices in the city and who has never checked which of them it is.
- An employer holding both codes who has never reconciled a single ECR against the salary register that produced it.
How we run your monthly PF and ESIC filings
- We read the existing position first: codes held, arrears open, and which of those four offices holds the file.
- We rebuild the employee master and the wage break up, because every later number comes out of it.
- We prepare the ECR, generate both challans and confirm payment ahead of the due date each month.
- We run the Maharashtra layer alongside, so the PTRC deduction and return, and then the annual enrolment payment, are not left to March.
- We answer the notices, the inspection queries and the employee level UAN and claim problems as they land.
Why hand your monthly PF and ESIC run to LegalX India?
We file for Pune employers every month, and we would rather fix a register once than argue with a notice later. Our Pune office is at Yashwant Nagar, Near Bharatiya Samajseva, Yerwada, Pune 411006, though nothing here asks you to visit it. EPFO, ESIC and profession tax filings are online, and jurisdiction follows your own registered address rather than ours. Pricing holds at ₹999 a month, the CA and CS team handle the filing end to end, and a callback within 30 minutes is there if you want to talk it through. For the wider picture, read the national PF and ESIC compliance guide and then bring us the Pune specifics.