West Bengal's Professional Tax has five salary slabs, the most granular slab structure of any state in India plus a February deduction rule that catches even experienced payroll teams off guard. Most payroll software either applies the wrong slab or deducts a flat ₹200 in February instead of ₹300, creating a GRIPS discrepancy at year-end. Hemiton Global manages end-to-end payroll for Kolkata businesses: salary processing, WB Professional Tax (including the February adjustment), PF, ESI, TDS, LWF, and the complete statutory compliance calendar — configured precisely for how Kolkata businesses are actually structured.
Kolkata doesn’t fit the single-sector city template that makes payroll easier to standardise. The city runs at least three distinct business economies at once and most generic payroll vendors don’t configure for any of them correctly.
The old economy: trading houses, jute mills, steel and engineering companies, and shipping and port-linked logistics businesses clustered around Dalhousie Square, Burrabazar, and the Howrah-Liluah belt. These have long-tenured workforces with complex leave and gratuity accruals, DA-linked salary structures tied to CPI revisions, and large contractual workforces subject to CLRA compliance with low tolerance for error given government audits and trade union scrutiny.
The emerging IT and ITeS economy: Salt Lake Sector V, New Town (Rajarhat), and the DLF IT Park corridor have grown into a genuine technology cluster; Wipro, TCS, Infosys, IBM, Cognizant, Capgemini and dozens of mid-size IT firms. Their payroll needs are closer to Bengaluru’s IT sector: structured CTCs, ESOP, variable pay, and multi-state payroll.
Professional services, healthcare and education: Kolkata has a disproportionately large professional class lawyers, chartered accountants, medical practitioners, and educators, many running their own clinics, chambers, or institutions with their own payroll obligations.
Commercial & IT
Trading & Industrial
Wider West Bengal
Ask any HR or finance leader where payroll actually breaks down, and the answer is rarely the calculation itself. It’s collecting attendance data from three systems that don’t talk to each other. It’s chasing managers for leave approvals. It’s reconciling reimbursement claims against policy. It’s fixing PF and ESI mismatches after the fact.
Modern payroll engines can compute salaries for hundreds of employees in minutes. The real cost in time, errors, and HR bandwidth sits in the input collection and validation stage before processing, and the compliance and filing stage after it.
Our positioning is deliberate. We don’t compete with payroll outsourcing companies on who runs the calculation faster. We compete on who removes the most work from your team’s month, before and after the 20 minutes that everyone else optimizes for.
Pre-Payroll — input collection, validation & coordination
Payroll Processing — the actual salary calculation
Post-Payroll — PF, PT, ESI & compliance filings
Already running Keka, Greythr, or another HRMS? We work inside it — managing input collection, validation, and coordination so the process no longer depends on one person remembering every step.
Prefer a single partner end-to-end? Hemiton Connect handles input collection, processing, and compliance filing on one system with a full audit trail and employee self-service built in.
Your HR and finance team defines the inputs. We run the entire payroll function — configured for West Bengal’s specific statutory requirements.
Gross-to-net computation for permanent staff, contractual workers, daily-wage employees, and third-party payroll, fixed pay, DA increments, production bonuses, and variable components.
Monthly ECR filing, 12%+12% PF contributions, ESIC deductions and half-yearly returns, UAN generation and activation.
Five-slab monthly PT deduction — including the February ₹300 adjustment for above-₹40,000 earners. Remitted via GRIPS by the 21st, with annual returns and PTRC compliance included.
Per-slab TDS including ESOP perquisites, bonus income, and 194J professional fees. Quarterly 24Q returns, Form 16, TRACES reconciliation.
Dearness Allowance revisions tied to the All India CPI index for Kolkata’s public sector, PSU-adjacent, and government-linked employers.
For older trading and manufacturing companies, gratuity accruals tracked per the Payment of Gratuity Act and settled accurately at exit.
Separate payroll register under the CLRA, 1970 — Form XIII compliance, EPFO/ESIC coverage for port, logistics, and manufacturing sectors.
Shift wage computation, OT per WB Factories Rules, attendance-linked pay for manufacturing units in Howrah, Liluah, Dankuni, and Haldia.
Vesting schedule tracking, taxable perquisite computation at exercise, correct TDS treatment, Form 12BA for Salt Lake and New Town IT companies.
LWF contributions as applicable under the WB LWF framework, with timely remittances and digital acknowledgements.
Gratuity, leave encashment, notice recovery with accrual complexity for long-tenure employees handled correctly.
Part A + B Form 16, TRACES-reconciled, investment proof collection, and year-end TDS reconciliation.
West Bengal’s PT is governed by the West Bengal State Tax on Professions, Trades, Callings and Employments Act, 1979, administered by the Directorate of Commercial Taxes. It has five salary-based slabs more brackets than any other state plus a February-specific deduction rule unique to West Bengal.
*₹300 is deducted in February to ensure the exact annual cap of ₹2,500 is met (₹200 × 11 months + ₹300 in February = ₹2,500). West Bengal has no other month-specific adjustment.
The February ₹300 Rule — What It Is and Why It Trips Payroll Systems
For employees earning above ₹40,000 per month, West Bengal PT deducts ₹200/month for 11 months (March through January) and ₹300 in February. This is not an error, it is the mechanism the state uses to ensure the total annual deduction reaches exactly ₹2,500, the constitutional cap. Many payroll systems apply a flat ₹200 across all 12 months, resulting in annual PT of ₹2,400 — ₹100 short. That shortfall means the employer's GRIPS remittance doesn't match the annual return, triggering a discrepancy that has to be corrected manually.
Other Key West Bengal PT Compliance Points
Remittance due date
21st of the following month via GRIPS. Late payment attracts 1% interest per month on the outstanding amount.
PTRC and PTEC
Employers need a PTRC to deduct employee PT and a separate PTEC for the company's own PT obligation. Most Kolkata companies need both missing the PTEC is a common oversight.
Annual return
Registered employers must file an annual return detailing salaries paid and PT deducted. Late filing attracts ₹200 for the first month of default, ₹100 for each subsequent month.
GRIPS payment portal
All WB PT remittances go through the Government Receipt Portal System at wbprofessiontax.gov.in. Hemiton Global manages GRIPS payments for all clients as part of the standard scope.
PT paid is deductible under Section 16(iii) only under the Old Tax Regime employees under the New Tax Regime cannot claim it, a configuration point that affects TDS accuracy. West Bengal PT applies uniformly across the state, the same structure and cycle applies whether your employees are in Kolkata, Durgapur, Siliguri, or Asansol. Hemiton Global handles PT deduction, GRIPS remittance, annual return filing, PTRC and PTEC compliance, and the February adjustment for all clients without your HR team tracking any of it.
With proactive payroll compliance management, we help businesses stay compliant, avoid penalties, and ensure accurate payroll every cycle.
₹300 deducted in February for >₹40,000 earners. Configured in the payroll calendar, not a manual adjustment. GRIPS remittance cleared before the 21st, every month.
Both certificates tracked, renewed, and used in the correct filing context — the dual-registration requirement many Kolkata companies miss.
Gratuity accruals, CPI-linked DA revisions, and CLRA contract worker registers handled for Kolkata's older business structures — not retrofitted from a startup-oriented template.
Single account for payroll across Kolkata and any WB location — Durgapur, Haldia, Siliguri, Asansol, Kharagpur. Same configuration, same compliance calendar.
Every PF register, ESIC return, GRIPS challan, WB PT annual return, and TDS acknowledgement maintained digitally — retrievable same-day when an inspector or auditor asks.
Kolkata employers navigate both central labour statutes and West Bengal state-specific requirements. Here is the full compliance scope Hemiton Global handles.
Every filing central and state is completed 3–5 days before the statutory deadline. After each payroll cycle, your account manager sends a compliance confirmation with GRIPS payment references, filing acknowledgements, and zero-penalty confirmation for that month.
Kolkata's economy defies the single-sector label. Hemiton Global's payroll services are configured for the city's actual employer mix.
Long-tenure payroll with complex leave accruals, DA-linked structures, and contractor workforce compliance.
Structured CTC payroll, ESOP and variable pay administration, multi-state payroll, and rapid onboarding.
Large-scale factory payroll with DA structures, shift allowances, union-linked pay, and gratuity accruals.
Factory payroll under WB Factories Rules, shift OT, and large contractual workforce management.
High-volume contractual and shift-based payroll, with CLRA compliance for contract labour.
Multi-entity payroll for hospital groups and WB healthcare establishment compliance.
Variable pay and bonus structures for banking and insurance, plus professional fee payroll for firms.
Academic salary structures, part-time faculty payroll, and WB Shops & Establishments compliance.
High-volume store staff and contractual workforce payroll with attendance-linked computation.
Many Kolkata-headquartered businesses have factories, warehouses, depots, or branch offices elsewhere in West Bengal. Hemiton Global manages payroll across the full state — one account, one compliance calendar.
IT parks, software & ITeS companies
Technology companies and emerging corporate hub
BFSI, professional services & advertising companies
Government offices, PSUs & established corporate HQs
Trading houses, commodity companies & distributors
Retail, hospitality & mixed commercial establishments
Engineering workshops, auto-ancillary & light manufacturing
Chemical, rubber & industrial estate companies
Shipping agents, freight forwarders & logistics companies
Steel, cement & heavy engineering companies
Petrochemicals, port-linked industries & HDCI employer group
Tea estates, logistics & North Bengal businesses
Manufacturing, tech & railway-linked employers
Pharmaceutical, industrial & institutional employers
Same West Bengal PT configuration. Same GRIPS compliance cycle. Same account manager. No new compliance setup required for any West Bengal location added to your account.
Tell us your headcount, current payroll setup, and the friction point whether that’s the February PT adjustment, long-tenure gratuity complexity, CLRA compliance for contract workers, or GRIPS remittance management. We’ll come back within 24 hours with a scope and a number.
