New Delhi: If you are a PAN card and Aadhaar holder and have still not linked both the government issued identity cards and was worried about it deadline which was last day of this month, then there is a good new for you! The Ministry of Finance on Saturday extended the deadline to link your Permanent Account Number (PAN) with the unique identity Aadhaar till December 30, 2019 from September 30, 2019. The deadline was last extended on March 31. The recent notification was issued by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), a division of the finance ministry.

“In exercise of the powers conferred under sub-section (2) of section 139AA of the Income tax Act, 1961 (,Act’)(43 of 1961), the Central Government hereby amends the notification of the Ministry of Finance (Department of Revenue) dated 31st March, 2019, published in the Gazette of India, Extraordinary, Part-II, Section 3, sub-section (ii) vide S.O. number 149S(E) dated April 1, 2019,” CBDT said in its notification dated September 28th.

The linking of both PAN and Aadhaar before deadline is important as the government has said that PAN Cards will become inoperative or inactive if not linked. It is also stipulated that processes related to investments, tax filing and loans may become difficult for those who have not linked both the identity cards.

With this extension of deadline, this is the seventh time the government has extended the deadline for individuals to link their PAN to Aadhaar. In her Budget speech earlier this year, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said that Aadhaar card will now double up as a PAN card for all purposes including filing of Income Tax.

“More than 120 crore Indians now have Aadhaar. Therefore, for ease and convenience of tax payers, I propose to make PAN and Aadhaar interchangeable and allow those who do not have PAN to file Income Tax returns by simply quoting their Aadhaar number and also use it wherever they are required to quote PAN,” Sitharaman said during her Budget speech in July, this year.

She also made it clear that those who had linked their Aadhaar with PAN may use Aadhaar in place of PAN under the IT Act. According to the e-filing website of the I-T department, around 6.77 crore of the 8.47 crore individuals have already linked their PAN with Aadhaar.

Those who have not linked their PAN with Aadhaar can complete the process via the I-T website or via SMS. But, users must make sure there is no mismatch of information such as name, age and gender while linking the two. In case there is a mismatch, users can get it fixed from either UIDAI (in error related to Aadhaar) or UTI-ITSL (for PAN related issues).