On Wednesday, the government made it mandatory for taxpayers to link the existing Aadhaar numbers with PAN cards with effect from July 1, despite the Supreme Court’s order.
The government has made quoting of the 12-digit biometric Aadhaar or the enrolment ID a must at the time of application of permanent account number (PAN).
Through an amendment to tax proposals, Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley, had made Aadhaar mandatory for filing income tax returns and provided for linking of PAN with Aadhaar to check tax evasion.
“Every person who has been allotted PAN as on July 1, 2017, and who in accordance with the provisions of sub-section (2) of section 139AA is required to intimate his Aadhaar number, shall intimate his Aadhaar number to the principal director general of income tax (systems) or DGIT (systems)”, said the Revenue Department.
Besides, it entrusted principal DGIT (Systems) or DGIT (Systems) with specifying the formats and standards along with a procedure for verification of documents filed with PAN application or intimation of Aadhaar number.
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The rules come into effect from July 1, 2017.
In India, there are over 25 crore PAN card holders while Aadhaar has been issued to 111 crore people. Only 2.07 crore taxpayers have already linked their Aadhaar with PAN.
