“Statutory dues” is a phrase that gets used loosely in manufacturing HR conversations, often covering several genuinely distinct legal obligations that each have their own registration process, calculation method, and filing calendar. Here’s what each one actually means for an employer in Maharashtra.
Provident Fund (PF / EPFO)
PF is a retirement-savings scheme administered by the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation. Once a plant crosses the employee threshold, PF registration is mandatory, and both employer and employee contribute a percentage of basic wages (plus dearness allowance) each month, split further between the EPF and EPS components on the employer side. Every covered employee needs a Universal Account Number (UAN), which follows them between employers — a detail that matters for onboarding and offboarding documentation. Contributions are due monthly, and lapses accrue interest and penalties that compound over time.
Employees’ State Insurance (ESIC)
ESIC is a social security and health insurance scheme covering medical care, sickness benefit, and related protections for employees below a wage ceiling. It’s a separate registration and contribution stream from PF — a plant can be fully PF-compliant and still have ESIC gaps, because the schemes cover different things and are administered by different bodies. Contributions are again split between employer and employee, calculated on gross wages up to the applicable ceiling, and filed monthly.
Professional Tax
Professional Tax is a state-level tax on income from employment, deducted by the employer from employee salaries and deposited with the Maharashtra state government. Unlike PF and ESIC, it’s not a contributory benefit scheme — it’s a tax collection obligation, with its own slab structure and its own filing calendar (frequency depends on the employer’s registration category). Employers also typically have their own Professional Tax registration and payment obligation, distinct from what’s deducted from employees.
Payment of Bonus Act
The Payment of Bonus Act requires eligible employers to pay an annual bonus to employees within a specified wage range, calculated as a percentage of wages within statutory minimum and maximum bounds, based on the employer’s allocable surplus for the accounting year. This is frequently the least-understood of the four for manufacturing HR teams, partly because it’s an annual (not monthly) obligation and partly because the calculation — tied to profitability and allocable surplus — is more complex than a flat percentage deduction. Employers should confirm applicability (based on employee count and eligibility criteria) and calculate the bonus correctly each accounting year rather than defaulting to an ad hoc discretionary bonus that may not satisfy the statutory minimum.
Why Employers Conflate These
It’s common for manufacturing HR teams to bundle all of this under a single “statutory compliance” line item, which is understandable but risky — each of these four obligations has a different registration authority, a different calculation basis, and a different filing rhythm (monthly for PF/ESIC/Professional Tax, annual for the Bonus Act). Treating them as one undifferentiated task is where gaps tend to open, because a compliance checklist built around a single generic “statutory dues” line item doesn’t prompt the right person to check the right thing at the right time.
A Practical Framework
The employers who manage this cleanly track each obligation separately: registration status, current contribution/deduction rate, filing deadline, and last-verified compliance date, reviewed on a schedule matched to each obligation’s actual filing rhythm — monthly reconciliation for PF/ESIC/Professional Tax, and a dedicated annual review ahead of the Bonus Act’s payment deadline.
How Unity Manages This for Clients
Our compliance consulting practice manages PF, ESIC, and Professional Tax as ongoing monthly obligations, alongside the documentation and audit-readiness that keeps a plant clean if a labour department inspection happens. For a broader look at PF and ESIC specifically, see our PF & ESIC compliance checklist, or talk to our compliance team for a review of your current statutory-dues position.