The Income Tax (IT) department has decided to take action against those who have not yet linked their permanent account numbers (PAN) to Aadhaar cards.
According to a report by Hindustan Times, at least 180 million permanent account numbers (PANs) could become defunct unless linked with Aadhaar numbers by the March 31 deadline. The move comes in a bid to nab tax evaders who use multiple PANs to conduct high-value transactions.
Officials told the leading daily that the government may also track expenditure patterns of individuals who spend large sums on luxuries, but under-report their income and evade tax. There are 50.95 crore PAN card holders in India as of June 2020, but only 6.48 crore have filed for income-tax returns (ITR), an IT official informed the Hindustan Times.
On August 12, the government said that as many as 32.71 crore permanent account numbers (PANs) have been linked with biometric ID Aadhaar. “Over 32.71 crore PANs linked with the Aadhaar,” MyGovIndia said in a tweet. The government has already extended the date for linking of Aadhaar with PAN to March 31, 2021.
The 12-digit biometric ID Aadhaar is issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India, or UIDAI, to a resident of India, and PAN is a 10-digit alphanumeric number allotted by the income tax department to a person, firm or entity.