With the arrival of the PAN-Aadhaar linking deadline, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) chairperson, Nitin Gupta informed that 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.
PAN-Aadhaar linking Deadline Approaching
The remaining people, who do not link it by the declared deadline of March 31 will not be able to reap the benefits while undertaking various business and tax-related activities, Mr Gupta added.
It is noteworthy here that the linking of the two databases has been made mandatory by the government.
Charges On PAN-Aadhaar Linking
The individual PANs not attached to the Aadhaar by the end of this financial year (March 31, 2023) will be rendered inoperative.
If you are still looking to link their PAN and Aadhaar between now and March 31 then it can be done by paying Rs 1,000.
During a post-Budget interview, Mr Gupta informed, ”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,”.
What Will Happen After the PAN-Aadhaar Linking Deadline ?
Further adding, “We have undertaken a number of public campaigns and have extended the deadline many times urging taxpayers to link the two…those categories 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,”.
A circular issued by the CBDT on March 30, 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.
The circular stated, ”In addition to the above, the taxpayer 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,”.
Notably, there are a few categories of taxpayers who are exempted from undertaking this linkage.
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, according to the notification issued by the Union finance ministry in May 2017.
