If you have already accumulated a considerable chunk of corpus in your EPF (Employees Provident Fund) account then you can use the money for any of the purposes given in the rules. As an EPF subscriber, you are supposed to fill form 31 to be able to withdraw the money.
First of all, you must understand that there are a number of purposes for which you are allowed to carry out EPF withdrawal. These include marriage or post matric (i.e. after 10th) education of children, withdrawal within one year before retirement, illness in certain cases for own treatment or family, purchase of house/flat, construction of house including acquisition of site.
The withdrawal is also permitted for a host of other purposes such as the repayment of loans in special cases, dismissal/discharge/retrenchment of member challenged by him/her in court, in case of establishment’s closure for more than six months and when employee does not receive wages for more than two months continuously.
These are some of the key steps that you need to follow in order to withdraw a part of your EPF money.
10 steps to follow to withdraw EPF money:
1. First you need to click online services as shown in the image above.
2. Then you need to log in to the EPFO member portal with your UAN (universal account number) and password.
3. The system will now ask for the miscellaneous details such your name, date of birth, PAN, Aadhaar number, and more
4. Now you need to click ‘proceed’ for online claim.
5. Now you need to select PF Advance (form 31) given in the drop-down menu
6. Here you need to specify the reason for claiming advance which may be illness, education, or buying a house
7. Now you need to enter the amount that you want and mention the current address.
8. You now need to sign the ‘disclosure form’.
9. Followin this, you need to click Aadhaar OTP to receive a OTP on your mobile number
10. After entering the password, you need to click ‘Validate OTP’ before submitting the claim form.
Meanwhile, it is important to note that the government recently raised the limit of EPF withdrawal from ₹50,000 to ₹one lakh for personal financial needs, an increase from the earlier threshold limit of ₹50,000. This was announced by Union Labour Minister Mansukh Mandaviya who had said at that time, “people often turn to their EPFO savings to meet expenses such as weddings and medical treatment etc. We have enhanced the withdrawal limit to ₹1 lakh at a time.”
