HR and statutory compliance in India

Indian statutory compliance is not a single annual event. It is a recurring monthly cycle of deposits and returns, each with its own due date, and the exposure it creates is cumulative rather than dramatic.

A missed deposit does not usually announce itself. It surfaces later — during an inspection, in a due-diligence review, or when an employee queries a Provident Fund balance that does not match their payslips. By then the shortfall has been compounding quietly for months across every affected employee, and the documentation needed to explain it was never created.

The second kind of exposure is structural rather than procedural. If salary structures are built on an outdated wage definition, every contribution computed on them has been computed on the wrong base — correctly filed, on time, and still wrong. That is the exposure the new Labour Codes created for employers who did not restructure.

We are deliberately not putting numbers against any of this. Penalties vary by statute, by state and by circumstance, and a figure quoted out of context is worse than no figure. What we will tell you is exactly which obligations apply to your team, and show you the proof that each one was met.

Every obligation sits on a live calendar with its statutory due date attached, and every employee's work location determines which state rules apply to them. TDS on salaries is deposited by the 7th. The EPF ECR and ESI contributions are due by the 15th. GSTR-3B follows by the 20th. Professional Tax runs on each state's own schedule.

Filing on time is the easy half. The half that matters to you is the proof: challans, acknowledgements and registers shared every cycle, so compliance is something you can verify rather than something you are assured of.

Long-term benefits are where informal arrangements fail audits, because they are the ones with no monthly deadline to force the issue.

Every employee is covered by a written Leave SOP aligned to the applicable state Shops & Establishments rules — earned, casual and sick leave, with clear carry-forward and encashment terms. Leave records are kept in proper registers, synced with payroll, and settled correctly in full-and-final at exit.

Gratuity is provisioned for every eligible employee from day one under the Payment of Gratuity Act rather than left as a hidden future liability, and it is funded through an approved Group Gratuity Fund structure with a regulated insurer. Funded and ring-fenced is materially different from a book entry: the money exists, and it exists somewhere other than our balance sheet.

The four Labour Codes came into force on 21 November 2025, replacing 29 central laws, and the central and state rules under them are still being notified.

That means compliance is not a state you reach once. We track notifications as they are issued and update employment terms, salary structures and registers to match, so nothing in your arrangement quietly falls behind the law between reviews.