While it is better to be safe than sorry and just get it over with, however, you don’t need to break your neck rushing to link your Aadhaar number to PAN before July 1. People are under the belief that their PAN will become invalid if it is not linked with Aadhaar by July 1 and the rush supposedly caused the website to crash.
Linking will become mandatory from July 1, therefore, it is not mandatory to link it ‘before’ that. Your PAN will not become invalid automatically if you are unable to link it by that July 1. Linking will become mandatory ‘after’ July 1 and the government may define a deadline by when the linking is to be done to avoid it becoming invalid – that date is yet to be set.
Section 139AA of the Income-tax Act says, “Every person who has been allotted permanent account number as on the 1st day of July, 2017, and who is eligible to obtain Aadhaar number, shall intimate his Aadhaar number to such authority in such form and manner as may be prescribed, on or before a date to be notified by the Central Government in the Official Gazette: Provided that in case of failure to intimate the Aadhaar number, the permanent account number allotted to the person shall be to be invalid and the other provisions of this Act shall apply, as if the person had not applied for allotment of permanent account number.”
Read that again, it says “on or before” the date which PAN and Aadhaar are to be linked has to be notified by the central government.
But you will have to mention your Aadhaar number in the application form when applying for a new PAN and for return of income post July 1.
Here’s how you can link your Aadhaar number to PAN
There is a provision placed by the IT department to link your Aadhaar to PAN on the efiling portal. When you visit the link, you need to enter your user id and password in order to access your profile. New users can register themselves on the portal by entering basic registration details like name, date of birth and PAN.
Update your profile to link Aadhaar
After logging into the portal, go to “Profile Settings” and click on “Link Aadhaar” in the drop down menu. On doing this a new form should be displayed.
Details required to link your Aadhaar number to PAN
The details you need to enter are your name, date of birth and gender according to the records in your PAN. After that you are required to enter your name and Aadhaar number as per your Aadhaar records. These details need to be submitted after entering the required text in the captcha code that appears on your screen.
Getting confirmation
Once you’re done submitting your Aadhaar details a confirmation message will show up that confirms the success of linking your PAN with Aadhaar. In addition, you will receive an email on your registered email id confirming the same.
Points to remember
Once you manage to successfully link your Aadhaar number to PAN, you can e-verify your IT return by using Aadhaar if your mobile number is in records of the Aadhaar database.
If, for whatever reason, the name on your Aadhaar and PAN do not match, you would need to provide an additional OTP or EVC to be able to proceed with a partially matching name.
