Looking to withdraw your provident fund money? know these EPF withdrawal rules first

Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), is a retirement fund body that allows its subscribers to withdraw money from Employees’ Provident Fund. The partail withdrawal of the provident fund money is allowed for specific purposes like marriage, education, purchase of land, home renovation, purchase or construction of a house, repayment of home loans and 12 months before retirement. For this, the subscriber can apply for an online PF withdrawal or submission of a physical application form for withdrawal. Here are the partial withdrawal options available for an employee according to EPFO:

1) House purchase or construction: The EPFO allows the subscribers to withdraw money for construction of house or purchase for site of the house. In order to withdraw the money for house purchase or construction, the member is required to have completed five years' membership of the EPFO.

2) Education purpose: For education purposes also the EPFO members can withdraw money. However,it can only be done for the post-matriculation education of his or her son or daughter as per certain conditions. For this the member is required to have completed seven years' membership of the EPFO.

3) Marriage: An EPFO member can only withdraw up to 50% of the money from the EPF account in case of his or her own marriage, the marriage of his or her daughter, son, sister or brother. While to withdraw the amount, the person should have completed contribution to EPF for atleast seven years.

4) Medical purpose: PF money can be partially drawn for medical purposes or for medical treatments of self, spouse, children, and parents. However, there is no lock-in period or minimum service period for this type of withdrawal.

5) House renovation: The member can withdraw partially from PF when he or she wants to repair or alter the residence. It can be availed two times, either five years from completion of house or ten years from availing the above. 

6) Retirement: A person can withdraw his or her entire provident fund corpus after completing 58 years of age. The employee can withdraw up to 90% of the provident fund balance, as per the EPFO. 

7) Repayment of home loans: The EPF subscriber is allowed to withdraw from the corpus for repayment of outstanding principal and interest towards a home loan under certain conditions. However at least 10 years of service completion is required to withdraw the amount. 

The process of withdrawing Employees' Provident Fund can be done in two ways. It can be done via submission of a physical application for withdrawal or via submission of an online application. 

The subscriber must have an active UAN (Universal Account Number) and the mobile number to withdraw PF online. Also the mobile number used for activating the UAN number should be in working condition. There is a Single Page Composite Claim Form, which has been introduced by EPFO to replace multiple claim form like Form 19, Form 10C, Form 31 etc. These claim forms are accepted and processed on self-attestation basis without the need for attestation by the employer, through which one can easily withdraw PF money as per convenience.