Worried About No PF Deduction on Low Salary: Could This Affect My Current Job?

I joined a small-scale engineering firm in Bangalore 5 years ago. I quit about 3 months ago. When I joined, my salary was INR 12,000, and when I left, it was INR 30,000. Now I am working in an MNC in Gurgaon where they are requesting my PF details. They asked for my payslips and bank statement, which also show that my salary was less than INR 15,000. I contacted my previous employer, and he said that there was no PF deduction for me. Due to a lack of awareness, I had never bothered about this before.

What can I do in such a situation?

Can I get in trouble? I had no understanding of such things until recently. Will my previous and/or current employer sue me for this? Is my job also in trouble?

Why should your previous employer sue you for not giving you PF?

Why should the current employer sue you for not having PF with old employment? Never. It is not the fault of the employee that he has not been covered by PF. If the previous organization had 20 or more employees, the company should have taken PF registration, and all the employees who were then getting a salary of not more than Rs 15,000 should have been given PF coverage. If not given, it is an error on the part of the employer. For that, the employees cannot be penalized.

Salary discrepancies and PF issues

If your salary at the time of leaving was Rs 30,000, why was it shown as less than Rs 15,000? Was there any underpayment through banks and the rest in cash? Is there anything to establish that your salary was Rs 30,000 so that the salary part of your declaration could be proved to be true? It is not the non-availability of a PF account but the evidence to show the salary that would create problems for your current employment. If you say that you were not covered by PF by the previous employer for reasons not known to you, that part will be clear. But you should prove that you were getting a salary of Rs 30,000 because it is on the basis of that deposition that the current company would be fixing your salary, and obviously, it would be higher than Rs 30,000, right?

Hello, my leaving salary was shown as 30k only. However, when they asked for bank statements, it also included the salary from earlier months. Additionally, the increment is not based on the leaving salary. It seems like they suspect some discrepancy.

Salary Verification Issues

The said salary should be reflected either in the payslip or in the bank statements. Otherwise, the current employer will not believe that you were getting Rs 30,000. If you say that part of your salary was paid in cash, then the current employer might underestimate your previous service. You should have made a decision when you were working in the previous company itself.