March 31 Last Date To Link PAN With Aadhaar; Here's A Step-By-Step Guide For Taxpayers

The Government of India has made linking one’s Aadhaar number to their PAN card mandatory for a large section of the population. March 31 has been fixed as the deadline to do this. If one fails to link these two cards by then, their PAN will become inoperative. This can have dire consequences. Pending returns will not be processed and refunds will not be issued to inoperative PANs. You will also no longer be able to use your PAN to file returns. There may be some tax repercussions as well. An individual shall be liable for all repercussions under the I-T Act when a PAN expires, according to a circular from the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), which sets policy for the Income Tax department.

Those looking to link their PAN with their Aadhaar between July 2022 to March 2023 can do so by paying a fee of Rs 1,000 through e-Pay Tax functionality or through Protean (NSDL).

The following steps must be followed to link Aadhaar to PAN via the Income-Tax Department Portal:

Open the official Income Tax e-filing portal- https://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in/.

If you have not already registered yourself on this portal, do so using your PAN as the user ID.

To log in, enter the user ID, password, and date of birth.

You will see ‘Profile Settings’ on the Menu bar of the page that opens next. Here, click on the ‘Link Aadhaar’ option.

Your date of birth and gender will be pre-filled in line with your PAN details. Verify these details with those mentioned on your Aadhaar card. If there is a mismatch here, you will have to get the same corrected before proceeding.

If both the details match, fill in your Aadhaar number in the empty field and click on the “link now” button.

You can also link the two documents via SMS by following these simple steps:

Keep your Aadhaar number or Unique Identification (UID) number and PAN handy for this.

Write the 12-digit Aadhaar number, followed by the alphanumeric PAN. Send this to either 567678 or 56161 via SMS.

If your date of birth matches on both the documents, the two cards will be linked.

Following that, an SMS will inform you of the PAN-Aadhaar link status.

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