Employment
under Indian law.
Indian employment work now straddles two regimes: the labour codes (Social Security 2020, Wages 2019, OSH 2020) with the old scheme provisions saved during transition, and the Indian Contract Act, 1872 whose s.27 voids the post-termination non-compete that half of all Indian offer letters still contain. The recurring obligations are relentless — EPF and ESI monthly, ESI half-yearly returns, the POSH annual report, statutory bonus, and salary TDS under s.192.
Last reviewed: 19 August 2026 · every citation on this page names the dataset it came from
- 9governing provisions
- 10product capabilities
- 5free tools
- 1limitation periods
- 2free templates
- 22compliance deadlines
- 4audiences
The employment relationship in India is governed twice over. Contractually it sits under the Indian Contract Act, 1872 — which is why s.27 matters so much: a post-termination non-compete is void as a restraint of trade, so the enforceable protections are confidentiality, IP assignment and a narrowly drawn non-solicit. LexVio's benchmarked corpus carries market-standard employment clauses for exactly those points, plus notice period, compensation, data privacy and termination grounds.
Statutorily it sits under the labour codes and their saved schemes. Section 16 of the Code on Social Security, 2020 (with the EPF Scheme 1952 provisions saved during transition) drives the monthly EPF contribution and ECR for establishments with 20+ employees. Section 29, read with Regulation 31 of the ESI (General) Regulations 1950, drives the monthly ESI contribution, and Regulation 26 drives the half-yearly returns of contributions for each of the April-September and October-March periods. Section 39 of the Code on Wages, 2019 — successor to s.19 of the Payment of Bonus Act, 1965 — sets annual statutory bonus disbursal.
Two obligations are easy to forget and expensive to miss. Sections 21-22 of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, read with Rule 14 of the POSH Rules 2013, require an annual report to the District Officer from every workplace with 10 or more employees, where an Internal Committee is mandatory. And the employer is a tax deductor: s.192 of the Income-tax Act, 1961 requires deduction at the average rate on estimated salary income at the time of payment, with the deposit and quarterly statement deadlines that follow.
The provisions, with their section numbers.
Each row names the dataset it was taken from — the seeded statute library, the compliance calendar's own statutory reference, the bare Limitation Act, or the DPDP research set. Nothing here was written from memory.
Tools that apply to this work.
Each runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded anywhere, and none of them needs an account.
Indian-law NDA in five templates — mutual, one-way, employment, vendor and IP-heavy.
Section-wise TDS rates for FY 2025-26 — salary, rent, professional fees, contractors and 20+ more.
Every recurring statutory due date, month by month, each carrying its own citation.
India-first templates, free to copy, modify and use commercially, without attribution.
New and old regime side by side for FY 2024-25 to FY 2026-27, with rebate, surcharge and cess.
Limitation periods that bite here.
Quoted from the India Code bare Act. The period is only half the answer — the third column of the Schedule, the point from which time begins to run, is what actually decides the date. Each entry sets both out.
Free templates for this area.
Free to copy, modify and use commercially, without attribution. They are starting points, not advice — have a qualified advocate or company secretary review anything before you sign it.
India-compliant employment agreement aligned to the labour codes, with confidentiality, IP assignment and a non-solicit drafted against Section 27 of the Indian Contract Act.
Employee stock option plan and grant letter aligned to the Companies Act 2013 and the Share Capital and Debentures Rules, with the Indian perquisite-tax position at exercise.
The capabilities that do this work.
Every one of these is a real feature page with its own status — Live, Beta or Soon. If it says Beta, it is in beta.
Three-tier extraction cascade so PDF, DOCX, and scanned bilingual contracts all work.
Red, amber, or green for every clause, with an explanation and confidence score.
India-tailored starting drafts for NDAs, MSAs, employment, SAFE notes, and more.
AI-generated replacement language for every flagged clause.
Produce a tracked-change Word document ready to send to counterparties.
Every deadline that applies to your entity in one calendar, with advance alerts.
Upload a ZIP of contracts and ask one question across all of them.
See which clauses are present, missing, or non-standard across your portfolio.
Generate replacement language and produce tracked-change Word files.
Auto-flags TDS obligations from contract clauses — section, rate, threshold, due date.
The modules this area draws on.
Contract review, AI redlining, court research, fix suggestions and the Legal Health Score.
SEBI, RBI, MCA/ROC and GST monitoring with alerts ahead of every deadline.
Income tax, TDS, GST, IFRS and IndAS read in the context of your own contracts and filings.
The people who do employment work.
22 compliance deadlines touch this area.
These are the statutory dates, not the extended ones — there is no automatic carry-forward when a due date falls on a Sunday or a gazetted holiday, and regulators grant relief only by ad-hoc notification. Every row states who it applies to; almost none of them applies to every entity.
- EPF — Monthly contribution + ECR
- ESI — Monthly contribution
- ESI — Half-yearly return of contributions (Apr-Sep)
- ESI — Half-yearly return of contributions (Oct-Mar)
- POSH — Annual Report to District Officer
- Statutory bonus — Annual disbursal
- Annual return — contract labour / establishment (ex-CLRA Form XXV)
- TDS / TCS payment
- TDS / TCS — Q1 statement
- TDS / TCS — Q2 statement
- TDS / TCS — Q3 statement
- TDS / TCS — Q4 statement
- Advance Tax — Q1 (15%)
- Advance Tax — Q2 (45%)
- Advance Tax — Q3 (75%)
- Advance Tax — Q4 (100%)
- ITR filing — Individuals / HUFs (no audit)
- Tax audit report (ex-3CA/3CB + 3CD)
- ITR filing — Companies / audit cases
- Transfer pricing accountant's report (ex-3CEB)
- ITR filing — TP cases
- Belated / revised return
Employment — the questions people actually ask.
Which recurring employment filings does the compliance calendar track?
The monthly EPF contribution and ECR under s.16 of the Code on Social Security, 2020; the monthly ESI contribution under s.29; the two ESI half-yearly returns of contributions under Regulation 26 of the ESI (General) Regulations 1950; the POSH annual report to the District Officer under ss.21-22 of the POSH Act, 2013 with Rule 14; annual statutory bonus disbursal under s.39 of the Code on Wages, 2019; and the unified annual return under the OSH Code, 2020. Salary TDS deposit and the quarterly TDS statements sit alongside them under the income-tax head.
What does the free employment agreement template actually cover?
It is an India-compliant employment agreement aligned to the labour codes, with confidentiality, IP assignment and a non-solicit drafted specifically against s.27 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872 — that is, drafted to survive the restraint-of-trade problem rather than to ignore it. Like every template in the library it is free to copy, modify and use commercially without attribution, and it is a drafting starting point, not advice.
Does LexVio handle payroll or HRMS?
No. LexVio reads and scores the documents — employment agreements, offer letters, ESOP plans and grant letters, vendor and contractor agreements — flags TDS obligations arising from their clauses, and tracks the statutory filing calendar. It is not a payroll engine and does not run your ECR or challans.
Is a stock option grant taxed in India at grant or at exercise?
The free ESOP Plan and Grant Letter template is aligned to the Companies Act, 2013 and the Share Capital and Debentures Rules, and states the Indian perquisite-tax position at exercise. Treat that as the template's own statement of the position and confirm it against current law for your facts — LexVio's tax analysis works section-wise against the Income-tax Act with CBDT circulars, and the section mapper shows where each 1961 provision lands in the Income-tax Act, 2025.
A map of the material, not advice on your matter. These hubs point at statutory text, free calculators and product capabilities. They are not legal advice, they do not create an advocate-client relationship, and they are no substitute for reading the bare Act as currently amended. Indian law is fact- and state-specific — stamp duty, registration and several employment obligations vary by state, and limitation turns on facts a web page cannot know. Take advice on your own facts before acting.
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