What Will Happen if You Don’t Link Your PAN to Aadhaar by 30 Sept?

Your PAN card might become useless if it is not linked to Aadhaar number by 30 September.

Pan-Aadhaar Linking:: The last date to link your PAN card with Aadhaar card is 30 September.

(Photo: Rhythum Seth/ The Quint)

The last date to link your PAN card with Aadhaar card is 30 September, according to a notification issued by the finance ministry on 31 March 2019.

Although the government has extended the deadline to link the two IDs several times in the past, this might be the ultimate deadline for the process to be completed.

Cards Will Become ‘Inoperative’

According to the amended Finance Bill 2019, all PAN cards that are not linked with Aadhaar will become 'inoperative' meaning that government will not consider those cards to be in use.

However, it is not clear if the cards can be made operative again since the government is yet to define ‘inoperative’.

Earlier, as per sub-section(2) of section 139AA of the Income Tax Act, PAN cards not linked to Aadhaar number within the deadline would become invalid.

"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 Finance Bill said.

According to a CBDT notification issued on 30 August, the Income Tax department will automatically issue PAN to a taxpayer using Aadhaar number for filing returns as part of a new arrangement to link the two databases.

Your PAN card can be easily linked with your Aadhaar card on the I-T department’s e-filing website.

The portal also helps you to check the status of your Aadhaar-PAN linking process. While Aadhaar is issued by UIDAI to a resident, PAN is a 10-digit alphanumeric number allotted by the tax department to a person, firm or entity.