Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman recenty steered through Parliament the Finance Bill of 2021 that included 127 amendments. The tweaking in the proposal to tax income on PF contributions over Rs2.5 lakh a year is one of them. Responding to MPs’ concerns on the tax, she said that nearly 93% PF account holders will be covered by the Rs2.5 lakh per year limit, while a mere 1% were abusing the system. Yet, she introduced an amendment doubling the threshold for annual PF contributions to Rs5 lakh, only for employees whose employers do not remit any contribution to their retirement fund account. For the crores of Employees’ PF account holders in the private sector, this Rs5 lakh threshold is a non-starter as an employer-employee relationship is an implicit requirement to open an EPF account. While employees may voluntarily enhance contributions beyond the statutory wage limit of Rs15,000 a month and employers are not bound to match enhanced contributions, a ‘zero employer contribution’ scenario is not possible for EPF members. This suggests that only some senior government staff who joined service before 2004 and are not part of the NPS will benefit from this concession, as they contribute to the GPF account and get a defined benefit pension separately. In a country with a large informal workforce and sparse social security systems, reasonable savings for retirement should not be penalised. But to give tax relief for such savings only to government employees smacks of bureaucratic preservation of self-interests deriding an equitable approach to taxation. The least the government could have done was to offer the same cap of Rs5 lakh to EPF members, by including their employer contributions during the year. The government must conduct a due dilligence before making any legislations. Else, their implications directly affect the common people.