The Central government had earlier notified that if your Permanent Account Number (PAN) card details are not linked with the Aadhaar card, your PAN will become invalid. As of now nearly 20 crore PAN cards (out of 44 crore) are yet to be linked, according to the income tax department.
A senior official told DNA, “So far 24 crore PANs have been linked. We suspect that a large number of the PAN cards would be bogus or duplicate. Many people without any taxable income possess PAN card, which is not required.” These steps are being taken with an objective of preventing tax evasion in the future as the use of duplicate PAN cards have been come to the notice of tax authorities.
The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) had issued a notification earlier this month and as per which the last date to link the PAN with Aadhaar is September 30. Though the date for linking the two numbers has been extended until September 30 from March 31, the returns can only be filed upon linking PAN and Aadhaar. The deadline for filing income tax returns is July 31. After that, the returns can be filed until September along with a late fee but linkage to Aadhaar is mandatory.
After September 30, taxpayers will not be allowed to file ITR. “However, any further extension of the deadline cannot be ruled out. It will be known only closer to the date,” said a source in the I-T department. PAN-Aadhaar seeding can be done online through the I-T department’s e-filing website incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in by clicking on ‘link Aadhaar’ The user can also avail SMS facility for linking the two.
Supreme Court had made it mandatory to link Aadhaar with the PAN for filing of income tax return in its judgement in July 2017 and said if PAN is not linked to the 12 digit Aadhaar it would be deemed as invalid. “Maximum number of PAN-Aadhaar linkage has been done in the past one year. We expect more people to comply with the fresh deadline. Many taxpayers had raised concerns over their inability to link due to a lengthy procedure of name correction. To address the problem, we extended the last date for PAN-Aadhaar linking to September 30,” the official said.
