PAN WILL CEASE IF NO AADHAAR LINK

The Permanent Account Number will become inoperative, if it is not linked with Aadhaar by March 31, 2020, the Income Tax department has said. The deadline for linking of PAN and Aadhaar has been extended several times and the current deadline ends on March 31, 2020.

The notification further says that persons whose PAN becomes inoperative shall be liable for all the consequences under the I-T Act for not furnishing, intimating or quoting the permanent account number.

Section 139 AA (2) of the Income Tax Act says that every person having PAN as on July 1, 2017, and eligible to obtain Aadhaar, must intimate his Aadhaar number to the tax authorities. Now, through a notification, the CBDT has amended Income Tax rules and inserted Rule 114AAA, stipulating the "manner of making permanent account number inoperative".

The Supreme Court had in September 2018 declared Aadhaar as constitutionally valid and held that the biometric ID would remain mandatory for the filing of income tax returns and allotment of PAN cards. Till January 27, 2020, over 30.75 crore PANs have already been linked to Aadhaar. However, 17.58 crore PANs are yet to be linked with the 12-digit biometric ID. Aadhaar is issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India, or UIDAI, to a resident of India and PAN is a 10-digit alphanumeric number allotted by the income tax department to a person, firm or entity.