Deadline For Linking PAN And Aadhaar Card Extended To March 31

If you have not yet linked your PAN card to your Aadhaar, you need to do it before March 31 of this year to avail yourself of tax benefits. The government has now made this mandatory, fixing March 31 as the deadline.

Nitin Gupta, the Chairperson of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), said on Sunday that hundreds of thousands of PANs have not yet been linked to Aadhaar as of yet. He directed them to do it before the deadline. Not doing so means they can’t avail of tax or business benefits. Nitin also said that of the total 61 crore PANs, about 48 crore of them have been linked with Aadhaar so far.

Individual PANs not linked with Aadhaar will be declared inactive after March 31. A fee of Rs 1,000 will now be needed to link PAN with Aadhar. Nitin said, “Many awareness campaigns have been conducted regarding linking of PAN with Aadhaar and we have extended this deadline several times. If Aadhaar is still not linked to PAN by the stipulated time, then that holder will not be able to get tax benefits as his PAN itself will not be valid after March.”

The CBDT has made it clear in a circular issued last year that once the PAN becomes inactive, the person concerned will have to face all the consequences prescribed under the Income Tax Act. This includes situations like the non-filing of income tax returns and the non-processing of pending returns.

Along with the news of making PAN a common identifier, he stated that the budget announcement will be advantageous to the corporate community. In the budget, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman declared that businesses will be able to utilise their PAN as a common identity in the digital system of government institutions.

Read all the Latest Business News here