Financial transactions won’t stop from tomorrow for not linking PAN with Aadhaar, but delay will attract fee

There is a good news that your PAN (Permanent Account Number) will not become inoperative from April 1, 2022 for not linking to your Aadhaar. So, you may continue with your financial transactions using the PAN till March 31, 2023, unless extended further.

However, unlike the previous extensions in the deadlines to link PAN with Aadhaar, this time you will have to pay late fee to avail the opportunity to link the two documents within the extended period.

According to a Press Release issued by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) on March 30, 2022, a window of opportunity has been provided to the taxpayers to intimate their Aadhaar to the prescribed authority for linking it to PAN till March 31, 2023 without facing repercussions.

As per the amendment in the provisions of the Income Tax Rules, 1962, that makes PAN-Aadhaar linking mandatory, every person who has been allotted a PAN as on July 1, 2017 and is eligible to obtain Aadhaar Number, is required to link the PAN with Aadhaar to ensure that the PAN doesn’t become inoperative and all procedures in which PAN is required don’t get halted.

However, unless the PAN-Aadhaar linking is not done by the midnight of March 31, 2022, a taxpayer has to pay a late fee of Rs 500 in the first three months of the Financial Year (FY) 2022-23 – that is from April 1, 2022 to June 30, 2022 – to ensure that the PAN doesn’t become inoperative due to non-linking with Aadhaar.

For further delay in linking PAN with Aadhaar – to avail the opportunity to link PAN with Aadhaar from July 1, 2022 to March 31, 2023 – a taxpayer has to pay a late fee of Rs 1,000.

However, the big respite for the taxpayers – who haven’t linked their PAN with Aadhaar yet – is that, along with their investments, procedures like furnishing of return of income, processing of refunds etc will continue till March 31, 2023 even without PAN-Aadhaar linking.

“After March 31, 2023, the PAN of taxpayers, who fail to intimate their Aadhaar, as required, shall become inoperative and all the consequences under the Act for not furnishing, intimating or quoting the PAN shall apply to such taxpayers,” said the CBDT in the release.