Pick your state to see the employee share, the employer share, how often it is collected and when it is due. Rates as reported for 2026.
This calculator gives the Labour Welfare Fund (LWF) payable for your state. Formula: (employee share + employer share) × number of covered employees gives the amount per collection period; multiply by 12, 2 or 1 periods for the yearly total. Example: Maharashtra is Rs 25 + Rs 75 per employee, every June and December.
Sample values shown (Maharashtra, 40 employees). Change them to get your own number.
The Labour Welfare Fund is a small statutory contribution collected by a state Labour Welfare Board and spent on worker welfare: medical camps, housing help, education scholarships for workers' children, and recreation. Unlike provident fund or ESI, there is no central LWF. Each state passes its own Act, fixes its own amount, and sets its own collection cycle.
That is why the LWF line on a Mumbai payslip looks nothing like the one on a Bengaluru payslip, and why an employee in Lucknow or Jaipur sees no LWF line at all. Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, Assam and most of the North East have no LWF Act in force.
Two features make LWF different from every other payroll deduction in India. First, it is almost always a flat rupee amount, not a percentage of salary, so a manager and a machine operator in the same factory usually pay the identical figure. Second, in most states it is not deducted every month: the employee share comes off one specific payroll run, usually June or December, and if payroll misses that window the employer ends up paying both halves out of pocket.
For a fixed-rate state the arithmetic is simple:
So a 40-person office in Maharashtra owes Rs 25 plus Rs 75, which is Rs 100 per employee per half-year, Rs 4,000 for the establishment each half-year, and Rs 8,000 for the full year. The employee sees Rs 25 come off the June payslip and Rs 25 off the December payslip. Nothing in the other ten months.
A handful of states do not use a flat figure. Haryana links the contribution to wages with a prescribed ceiling and the employer pays roughly twice the employee amount, and the figure is revised more often than most. Treat the Haryana number in the table below as indicative and check the current notification before running payroll.
Amounts below are per employee per contribution period. Where two reputable compliance sources disagree on a state, that is marked, because publishing a confident wrong number is worse than publishing an honest range.
| State or UT | Employee | Employer | Frequency | Due date |
|---|
Maharashtra and Karnataka were checked against official notices in October 2026 (see Sources). The other states are compiled from compliance publishers' summaries of board notifications and have not been independently verified by us. States revise these quietly and often without publicity, so verify against your state board portal before you remit.
Having an LWF Act in the state does not mean every establishment is covered. Each Act sets an employee-count threshold: Maharashtra applies from 5 employees, Karnataka lowered its threshold from more than 50 to 10 or more employees (Karnataka Labour Welfare Fund (Amendment) Act, 2025, in force from 7 January 2026), and Tamil Nadu covers factories with 5 or more workers plus notified commercial establishments.
Within a covered establishment, the usual exclusions are employees in a genuine managerial or supervisory role above a state-defined wage line, apprentices engaged under the Apprentices Act 1961, and people employed casually for fewer than the prescribed number of days. The definitions differ enough between states that assuming your senior staff are exempt is a common and expensive mistake.
Contract workers are generally covered. The principal employer is expected to confirm that the contractor has actually deposited LWF for workers on site, so ask for the challan alongside the invoice.
The amounts are trivial. The consequences of ignoring them are not: state boards typically charge interest on delayed contributions plus a penalty, and LWF default is one of the easiest things for a labour inspector to spot because the payslip either shows the line or it does not.
All four can apply to the same employee in the same month. They are not alternatives to one another.
Only in a few states. Haryana, Punjab and Chandigarh collect monthly. Maharashtra, Gujarat, Delhi, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Goa and Odisha collect half-yearly, with the employee share coming off the June and December payroll. Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana collect once a year. Kerala's cycle depends on the type of establishment.
Most likely your state has no LWF Act. Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, Assam, Himachal Pradesh and the North Eastern states do not levy it. The other possibilities are that your establishment is below the state's employee threshold, that you fall in an excluded managerial or supervisory category, or that this simply is not a collection month in a half-yearly or annual state.
No. Unlike professional tax, which is deductible from salary (Section 16(iii) in the 1961 Act numbering), and provident fund, which counts under Section 80C (now Section 123 of the Income-tax Act, 2025) in the old regime, the Labour Welfare Fund contribution gives the employee no income tax benefit. It simply reduces take home pay by a few rupees in the months it is collected.
Yes. Nothing stops an employer from bearing both shares, and many do because the amounts are too small to justify the payroll complexity. It goes into the same challan. The reverse is not allowed: the employer share can never be recovered from an employee's wages.
Pay the arrears voluntarily. State boards commonly levy interest on the delay plus a penalty, and those charges are lower when you come forward than when an inspector finds it. Remember that for a missed half-yearly cycle you cannot go back and deduct the employee share from past salaries, so the employer absorbs the whole amount.
Contract workers are covered in most states, and the principal employer carries responsibility for making sure the contractor actually deposits it. Truly independent contractors and platform gig workers who are not employees under the state Act are usually outside it, though several states are actively reviewing how gig workers fit into welfare fund frameworks.
It varies. Maharashtra starts at 5 employees, Karnataka at 10 since 7 January 2026, Tamil Nadu at 5 for factories. Some state Acts apply to any covered establishment regardless of size. Check your state Act rather than assuming a common threshold.
GetHirePlus helps you run hiring end to end, from job posts and AI screening to interviews and offers, so your team can spend its time on candidates instead of spreadsheets.
Get started freeOfficial sources used for the rates and rules on this page:
Spotted a wrong value or an outdated state rate? Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
AI hiring software for resume screening, AI phone interviews, assessments, live interviews and applicant tracking.
Get started