Aadhaar-PAN Linking Mandatory From July. How To Do It

The Income Tax Department has urged assessees to link their Aadhaar number with PAN or Permanent Account Number. The taxman has not only simplified the process for Aadhaar-PAN linkage but also provided multiple facilities to do this. In Budget 2017, the government mandated seeding of Aadhaar with Permanent Account Number to avoid individuals using multiple PANs to evade taxes. From July 1, linking of existing Aadhaar numbers with taxpayers' PAN will be mandatory. The new rules will come into force from July 1, 2017, the Department of Revenue has said.

The Income Tax Department has introduced a one-page form for taxpayers to manually apply for linking their Aadhaar with Permanent Account Number (PAN), apart from the available online and SMS facilities.

The government has made quoting of Aadhaar or enrolment ID a must at the time of application of PAN. Through an amendment to tax proposals in the Finance Bill for 2017-18, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has made the 12-digit biometric identity system Aadhaar mandatory for filing ITRs and provided for linking of PAN with Aadhaar to check tax evasion through use of multiple PAN cards.

"Every person who has been allotted PAN as on July 1, 2017, and who in accordance with the prof 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)," according to the revenue department.

As many as 2.07 crore taxpayers have already linked their Aadhaar with PAN. There are over 25 crore PAN card holders in the country while Aadhaar has been issued to 111 crore people.

Here's how to link Aadhaar with PAN through various channels:

How to do Aadhaar-PAN linking via SMS

For all assessees whose name given in the Aadhaar card and PAN card are identical, a simple SMS-based facility is provided to achieve the linking. Such assessees need to send an SMS to 567678 or 56161 in the following format:

UIDPAN<SPACE><12-digit Aadhaar><Space><10-digit PAN>

For example: UIDPAN 111122223333 AAAPA9999Q

However, in case of assessees whose names given in the Aadhaar and PAN cards have a "minor mismatch", according to the Income Tax Department, the linking can be achieved using an online facility.

A facility available on the Income Tax Department's e-filing website enables assessees with identical names given on Aadhaar and PAN as well as those with a minor mismatch to link the two identities.

The taxman has given steps to carry out this task through the portal: