THE NEWSMAN OF INDIA.COM
The Government today notified the rules for making it mandatory to link the biometric identification card Aadhaar to PAN cards from July 1, 2017. So wherever there is use of PAN card – tax filing, applying for PAN card, business and financial transactions, quoting the 12-digit biometric Aadhaar card is must from July 1, as per the notification issued today. The Income tax rules have been amended for this inclusion. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley through an amendment to tax proposals in the Finance Bill for 2017-18 had already made Aadhaar mandatory for filing of income tax returns and also for linking to it to the PAN to trail the transactions and avoid tax evasion through multiple bogus PAN cards. There are over 111 crore Indians with Aadhar card but the PAN card holders just 25 crore. Out of this already 2.05 crore Indians have linked their PAN to Aadhaar card. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court upheld the validity of an I-T Act provision making Aadhaar mandatory for allotment of PAN cards and tax return filing, but had put a partial stay on its implementation till a Constitution bench addressed the issue of right to privacy. Following this, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) had said the linking of Aadhaar and PAN will be a “must” for filing of income tax returns (ITR) and obtaining PAN from July 1.

Earlier Revenue department had notified amendments to the income tax rules dealing in PAN application, which will come into effect from July 1, 2017. The department said “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 to the principal director general of income tax (systems) or DGIT (systems)”.