EPF Withdrawal Tax Calculator — Before 5 Years (TDS, 2026-27)

Two different rules are at work here, and most guides run them together. One decides whether the money is taxable at all. The other decides how much EPFO holds back before paying you. They can disagree, and the gap between them is where refunds and surprise tax bills come from.

Is it taxable? Schedule XI, Part A of the Income-tax Act, 2025 keeps the accumulated balance out of your income where you have rendered 60months — five years — or more of continuous service. Continuous means across employers too, so long as you transferred the balance rather than withdrawing it each time it changed. Below five years the balance is taxable, with three exceptions written into the same paragraph: termination by ill health, by contraction or closure of the employer's business, or by any other cause beyond your control.

How much is withheld? Section 392(7) — the successor to section 192A of the 1961 Act, which the Income-tax Act, 2025 replaced on 1 April 2026 — requires the fund to deduct 10% × gross payout where the aggregate payment is ₹50,000 or more and the balance is not exempt. The threshold is a floor on the deduction, not on the tax: at ₹49,999 nothing is withheld, but the amount still belongs in your return. Where no operative, Aadhaar-linked PAN sits on your UAN, section 397(2) raises the rate to 20%. Older articles still quote 34.608% for that case; the Finance Act 2023 removed it.

What the deduction ignores.TDS is a flat percentage of the gross payout. It takes no account of your slab, your rebate, or the fact that part of the balance is your own contributions. Your own principal came out of already-taxed salary and is not income twice — unless you claimed the section 80C deduction on it in earlier years, in which case that benefit is withdrawn and the whole balance becomes taxable. Anyone on the new regime never claimed it, so for them the taxable slice is the employer's share plus all the interest.

The settlement. The calculator therefore runs your tax twice — once with the withdrawal and once without — under the tax year 2026-27slabs, the rebate for small taxpayers and its marginal relief, surcharge where it applies, and 4% health and education cess. The difference is what the withdrawal actually costs. Set the TDS already deducted against it and you have your refund, or the balance to keep aside for filing. If the whole year's income stays inside the basic exemption limit you can head the deduction off entirely with Form 121, which replaced Form 15G / 15H for tax year 2026-27 onwards.

Deduction at source only. The final tax depends on your slab — use the calculator above for that.

Every row is generated by the same function that powers the calculator, so the table cannot drift from the tool. Source: section 392(7), Income-tax Act, 2025.

• Income Tax Department — section 392(7), Income-tax Act, 2025 (TDS on the accumulated balance of a recognised provident fund)
• Income Tax Department — Schedule XI, Part A (recognised provident funds: when the balance is exempt)
• Income Tax Department — higher deduction where PAN is not furnished (now section 397(2))
• Income Tax Department — section 192A of the 1961 Act (the predecessor provision, for withdrawals before 1 April 2026)
• EPFO circular, 13 April 2026 — Form 121 replaces Form 15G / 15H for TDS exemption
• EPFO — provisions related to TDS on withdrawal from EPF (member instruction sheet)

A caution on that last source: EPFO's member sheet has not been reprinted since before the Finance Act 2016 and still shows a ₹30,000 threshold and a 34.608% no-PAN rate. Both figures are superseded — ₹50,000 and 20% are current. It is cited for its procedural rules, not its rates. Every figure on this page was last read back against the sources above on 2026-08-13, and is reviewed after each Finance Act and each EPFO circular on TDS. Tax year 2026-27 runs 1 April 2026 – 31 March 2027.