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To facilitate ease of compliance by the taxpayers the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has extended the deadline for linking Permanent Account Numbers to Aadhaar to December 31. Nearly 13 crore linking has already happened.
The original deadline for linking was July 31. The Finance Ministry had made it mandatory to link Aadhaar and PAN for filing income-tax returns and obtaining a new PAN from July 1.
The CBDT has also extended the due date for filing income-tax returns and audit reports to October 31 from September 30. Tax officials expect the number to rise further with the extension of the window.
“There are about 31.78 crore PAN issued to individuals, but not all of them are active. Many got PAN made as a proof of identity,” a senior income tax official told BusinessLine .
Expressing satisfaction over the exercise, officials said that many of the individuals are not active taxpayers while some are still unaware about the process.
“As and when some of them become active taxpayers, it will be necessary for them to link the two,” said the official.
According to data on the income tax e-filing website, of the 6.31 crore registered users, 3.38 crore have seeded their Aadhaar with PAN. Another 1.79 crore people are not registered but have linked the two numbers.
Since a case challenging Aadhaar is still pending with the Supreme Court, sources said that the government is also not considering any punitive action for non-linkage of the two numbers.
But the non-linkage will have disadvantages for taxpayers.
According to the Ministry, the income tax returns will not be processed until the linkage of Aadhaar with PAN is done.
Further, claims for income tax refund post July 1 are not being processed without the Aadhaar. “If they provide the Aadhaar, then they have to link it to the PAN also,” said another official.
The Centre had made linking the two numbers mandatory to prevent duplication of PAN cards and curb money laundering and unlawful activities.
Minister of State for Finance Santosh Kumar Gangwar had recently informed the Rajya Sabha that the government has identified and deleted or deactivated over 11.44 lakh PANs where multiple PANs were found allotted to one person.
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