Your PAN Card Will Lose Its Power If Not Linked With Aadhaar Before This Date (How To Link?) [Updated]

Update: Finance Ministry has informed that the deadline to link PAN Card with Aadhaar # has been extended from September 30 to December 31st.

The deadline to link your Aadhar Card and Permanent Account Number (PAN) card is September 30, just around the corner. We suggest you all to link it if you haven’t already. As per the notification issued by finance ministry in the July 2019 Budget, if the two aren’t linked by the end of September, your PAN will become inoperative.

What if the Two Aren’t Linked Until Sept 30?

The government has extended the deadline for linking the two identity cards several times in the past and September 30 could probably be the last and final call to complete the linking process.

Earlier however, the rule projected out by the government was that if the two cards aren’t linked until a specified date notified by the income tax department, then the PAN card would become invalid. This meant that you will be treated as thought you’ve never had one.

The changed rule in the Budget 2019 in July said that failing to link the two cards by Sept 30 would yield to your PAN card being inoperative. This means that you cannot use your PAN to conduct financial transactions, where quoting of PAN is mandatory until you link it to Aadhar. The change was announced in the recent Budget to protect the previous transactions done by you using your PAN.

Whether they can be made operative again later on is not yet clear as the word “inoperative” is yet to be defined by the income tax department.

In order to protect validity of transactions previously carried out through such PAN, it is proposed to amend the said proviso, so as to provide that if a person fails to intimate the Aadhaar number, the PAN allotted to such person shall be made inoperative in the prescribed manner.

The new rules also allow PAN card holders to quote Aadhar in lieu of the former. Those who quote a Aadhar number, which is not linked to any PAN, will be automatically issued a new PAN card while income tax returns.

How to Link PAN with Aadhar?

We have already covered a separate article, illustrating all the steps one can go through for linking Aadhar and PAN cards, if there’re any changes you have to make in the name section.

• You can easily link your 12-digit UIDAI-issued Aadhar number with your 10-digit alphanumeric PAN on the income tax department’s e-filing website. 
• You can also check the status of Aadhar-PAN linking on the portal.
• For all new PAN cards it is mandatory to quote your Aadhar numbers. 

 It is also mandatory to link your PAN with Aadhar while filing ITR.