What sets an Indian payslip apart
The biggest difference is how tax is computed. Year-end-settlement systems such as Korea's withhold from a simplified monthly table and settle after the year closes. India works the other way round: under section 392 of the Income-tax Act, 2025 (formerly section 192) the employer estimates the employee's income for the whole year, computes the annual liability, and divides it across the remaining months as TDS. That is why an unchanged salary can produce a January–March deduction several times the size of April's — the employee failed to submit investment proofs and the estimate was revised. The new Act took effect on 1 April 2026 and changed the numbering, not the method: payslips for months up to March 2026 still fall under the Income-tax Act, 1961.
The financial year — the "tax year" in the 2025 Act — is the second difference: 1 April to 31 March, with April as month one. Build every register and schedule on that order. Third, in place of a single set of national insurances (Korea has four), the social-security stack is EPF, EPS, ESIC, professional tax and the labour welfare fund — five separate statutes with separate ceilings. Fourth, amounts are grouped Indian style, 12,34,567, in lakh and crore, and documents carry the amount in words next to the figure. Finally, electronically issued payslips carry the line "This is a computer generated payslip and does not require signature." so the absence of a signature is not a defect.
UAN, ESIC number and PAN
The UAN is a 12-digit number EPFO issues to the employee, and the point of it is that there is only ever one. When someone changes jobs the UAN stays and the new employer's Member ID is attached beneath it, which is how the accumulated balance transfers. If a joiner already contributed to EPF somewhere, collect the existing UAN rather than generating a new one — duplicates have to be merged by EPFO and withdrawals are blocked in the meantime.
The ESIC IP number is the 10-digit insured-person number. Coverage depends on monthly ESI wages being ₹21,000 or less: for pay months up to October 2025 that was gross pay under the ESI Act, and from the November 2025 pay month it is wages under the Code on Social Security, 2020 — Basic + DA, topped up to half of total pay including the employer's PF contribution — so far more employees are covered than a gross test suggests. The classic mistake is stopping deductions the moment a raise crosses the ceiling: an employee covered at the start of a contribution period (April–September or October–March) stays covered to its end — under the ESI Act until 20 November 2025 and under S.O. 2351(E) from 8 May 2026; no instrument provided it in between. PAN is the income-tax identifier, and without one section 397(2) of the 2025 Act (formerly section 206AA) pushes withholding to 20%. Printing all three on the payslip lets employees reconcile against their annual tax statement — Form 168, which replaced Form 26AS and the AIS — and their EPFO passbook, which removes most payroll queries before they are asked.
Handling loss of pay
Loss of pay is unpaid absence after leave balance runs out. An Indian payslip shows total days, days paid and LOP days together so the employee can see exactly why the amount fell. The arithmetic is simply earnings × days paid ÷ total days, which is what the proration switch here does. Whether total days means calendar days or a fixed 26 is a policy choice — write it into the employment terms and never vary it by employee.
Deductions are the part people get wrong. They are not prorated; they are recomputed. EPF is 12% of the reduced PF wage — Basic + DA, and from the November 2025 pay month topped up to half of the reduced pay (employer PF included) where it falls short (if your company applies the wage ceiling, check whether the reduced PF wage has fallen below it — the EPF note in the calculator shows the ceiling for the pay month), and professional tax has to be re-slabbed against the gross actually paid that month, which can drop the levy to a lower bracket. That is why this tool never scales deductions automatically and gives you a separate recalculate button instead.
Before you issue it
Check four things. Are total deductions under 50% of gross? Section 7(3) of the Payment of Wages Act caps them there, or 75% where co-operative society dues are involved. Does the EPF figure match company policy — 12% of the wage ceiling when the ceiling is applied, or 12% of full Basic without it? The ceiling was raised in September 2026 (S.O. 5109(E)), so the capped figure changed from the October 2026 payslip, with September split between the old and new ceilings by calendar days (the method of a circulating EPFO FAQ, not yet confirmed by an official circular; some advisers apply the new ceiling to the whole of September). Mixing the two approaches across employees is an audit finding waiting to happen.
Is the pay date within the statutory window? Section 17 of the Code on Wages requires monthly-rated wages to be paid by the seventh day of the following month. And are the downstream filings scheduled? EPF ECR and ESIC contributions are due by the 15th, TDS by the 7th, and the quarterly salary TDS statement by the end of the month following the quarter (the January–March 2026 quarter was due 31 May 2026) — Form 138 from the April–June 2026 quarter, Form 24Q for the quarters before it. The annual TDS certificate follows by 15 June: the old Form 16 for FY 2025-26, and Form 130 from Tax Year 2026-27 (first due in June 2027). Payslips and wage registers must be preserved for at least three years and produced to an inspector on demand.