CBDT Chairman Sushil Chandra said only 23 crore PAN card holders have so far linked their cards with biometric ID Aadhaar. Out of the total 42 crore PAN holders, only a little more than half have linked them even as the deadline to link the two comes to an end on March 31, 2019.
Mr. Chandra was speaking at an Assocham event said, “By linking with Aadhaar, we will know whether there are any duplicate PAN or not. And there are certain duplicate PANs. If it is not linked, we may cancel the PAN also. Once Aadhaar is linked with PAN and PAN is linked with bank account, the ITD can find out spending pattern and other details of the assessees.
Mr Chandra’s statements come just days after the Supreme Court ruled that the linking of PAN with Aadhaar would be mandatory to file income tax returns from April 1, 2019 onwards.
Section 139AA of the Income Tax Act, inserted in 2017, says not only is PAN mandatory for filing income tax returns but it is also mandatory for applying for a PAN card, which means that all new PAN cards issued will automatically be linked to Aadhaar. The Section also says that “in case of failure to intimate the Aadhaar number, the permanent account number allotted to the person shall be deemed to be invalid”.
According to Tax analysts the number of PAN card holders far exceeds the number of people filing income tax returns. The linking of the two IDs was mandatory for even those who do not need to file returns since the PAN would be cancelled otherwise.
According to Finance Minister Piyush Goyal in his Interim Budget speech, the number of income tax returns filed stands at 6.85 crore, which works out to just about 16% of the total number of PANs allotted.
Tax analysts pointed out that the senior citizens, whose incomes fall below the Rs 2.5 lakh a year, also likely have PAN cards that are not linked to Aadhaar, which they will have link now.
