PAN-Aadhaar Linking Deadline: 13 Crore People Yet To Link PAN & Aadhaar, Says CBDT Chairperson
CBDT Chairperson Nitin Gupta said 48 crore PAN cards have been linked with Aadhaar so far, and those who do not link it will not get benefits while undertaking business and tax-related activities
New Delhi: As the PAN-Aadhaar linking deadline is approaching, Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) chairperson Nitin Gupta said out of the total 61 crore Permanent Account Numbers (PANs) issued to individuals till now, almost 48 crores have been linked with Aadhaar to date. Those who do not link it by the declared deadline of March 31 will not get benefits while undertaking various business and tax-related activities, added Gupta, according to news agency PTI.
The linking of the two databases has been made mandatory by the government and individual PANs not attached to the Aadhaar by the end of this financial year (March 31, 2023) will be rendered inoperative. In fact, one has to pay Rs 1,000 in order to link their PAN and Aadhaar between now and March 31.
”There are about 61 crore individual PANs issued till now and out of this, around 48 crore have been seeded with Aadhaar. The difference is around 13 crore now, including the exempt category, and we hope the rest will also be linked by the end date,” informed Gupta during a post-Budget interview.
"We have undertaken a number of public campaigns and have extended the deadline many times urging taxpayers to link the two…those category of taxpayers who are required to do so but do not link them, will stand to lose tax benefits as their PANs will not be valid after March," he added, as quoted by PTI.
What happens if you don't link your PAN & Aadhaar?
On March 30, a circular issued by the CBDT clarified that once a PAN becomes inoperative, an individual shall be liable to all the consequences under the Act (I-T Act) and face a number of implications such as the inability to file a return using the inoperative PAN; pending returns will not be processed; pending refunds will also not be issued to inoperative PANs; pending proceedings such as defective returns cannot be completed once the PAN is inoperative and tax will be required to be deducted at a higher rate.
”In addition to the above, the tax payer might face difficulty at various other fora like banks and other financial portals, as PAN is one of the important KYC (know your customer) criterion for all kinds of financial transaction,” the circular said.
However, there are a few categories of taxpayers, exempted from undertaking this linkage. As per the notification issued by the Union finance ministry in May 2017, the ’exempt category’, include those individuals residing in the states/UTs of Assam, Jammu and Kashmir and Meghalaya; a non-resident as per the Income-tax Act, 1961; of the age of eighty years or more at any time during the previous year and a person not a citizen of India.
CBDT develops policy for the I-T department. While Aadhaar is issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to a resident of India, PAN is a 10-digit alphanumeric number allotted by the IT Department to a person, firm or entity.
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