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Central Government - PAN cards not linked with Aadhar wont be valid from September!

Posted on: 11/Jul/2019 4:23:39 PM
The Central government has ordered that it is mandatory to link all PAN cards with Aadhar cards. Otherwise, PAN cards without Aadhar link will be invalid from 1st September. Instead, a new Aadhar number would be given through the Income Tax Department.

In the central government presented to the parliament last week, it was announced that PAN card is not mandatory to file IT returns and instead, Aadhar can be used for the same.

Just as practised in most countries throughout the world, Aadhar Identity Card was devised and proposed to be given a unique identification number in order that every citizen uses the same and also for better social protection. The main objective for the introduction of Aadhar card is to have a single large database on the citizens of the country!

The central government has been persistently informing the public that Aadhar card can be used to avail all the government welfare/benefit schemes and Aadhar number will be mandatory for the same. The central government especially announced that Aadhar will be mandatory for LPG cooking gas connection, Senior Citizens Assistance/welfare schemes, etc, including all other welfare schemes.

In a similar trend, the central government department of Direct Taxes, realising the significance of Aadhar cards, along with the central government insisted it was mandatory to link PAN card with Aadhar.

Most persons have wantonly ignored this persistent request from the central government. They have continued to ignore this in spite of repeated reminders from the central government. Among this section, there are many culprits who indulge in illegal financial transactions especially using black money and do trading thus depriving the central government of the revenues to be earned as the tax that should have been normally paid!

Once Pan card is linked with Aadhar it would be impossible to indulge in such illegal transactions and illegal trading! Only due to this reason, certain sections of people continuously ignore this appeal to link PAN/Aadhar.

Some of them even indulged even in submitting a public petition against this. Due to this, the central government was constrained to keep on extending the deadline for Aadhar/PAN link several times!

Finally, during last March, CBDT (Central Board of Direct Taxes) announced a deadline that Aadhar-PAN link must be done before end September and also that Aadhar-PAN link is mandatory for filing Income Tax Returns from April – otherwise, PAN card will be blocked.

So, with the possibility that they may not be able to file IT returns, many of those who have not linked Aadhar-Pan so far, have done it and filed their IT returns.

In this scenario, during the recent presentation of the Budget to the parliament, the central finance minister Nirmala Seetharaman announced that Aadhar card can as well be used for filing Income Tax returns. However, some of the people were misled to believe that the significance of PAN card is also lost with this option and chose to ignore Aadhar-Pan link!

Getting a complete idea on this approach of a part of the public, the central government has made a fresh announcement. According to this, Aadhar-Pan card link must be done before end August. Otherwise, the PAN card will be rendered invalid.

In this regard, the secretary of the Central Income Tax Department, A. B. Pandey shared:

‘It is indeed mandatory to link PAN card with Aadhar! In spite of repeated reminders, it seems a majority has chosen to ignore this! So, we have made a decision to make the PAN card invalid in case of failure to link PAN-Aadhar. The invalid PAN card will become valid only after linking the Aadhar card.`