Giving relief to the tax payers, the central government has extended the deadline to link aadhaar and PAN to December 31st. Earlier, the government had repeated it on a number of occasions that it would not extend the deadline of the linking of PAN number and aadhaar card and also that the income tax returns of individuals, who have not linked their aadhaar and pan, would not be processed.
The latest development comes on the last day of the previous deadline and it clearly shows that still there are a number of users who have not linked their PAN and aadhaar numbers to get into a transparent tax net. This is also a huge relief to the income tax payers who had filed their ITR before August 5 (the deadline to file ITR) and were not able to link their PAN with aadhaar due to any reason.
The tax payers have been facing a number of issues in linking their aadhaar and PAN. A lot of individuals have written complaints to the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) about having different spellings of their name in aadhaar and PAN database and that has caused errors for a number of individuals. The automatic verification system does not link aadhaar and PAN if there is any difference in the spelling of the name.
The August 31 deadline to link aadhaar and PAN was just for the income tax payers. If you do not pay income tax or are not under the tax paying criteria yet, there is still no notification on the deadline to link the two identity proofs.
Along with the individuals not in tax criteria, those who are non-resident Indians, above the age of 80 are exempted from this if they do not have an aadhaar number of the enrollment ID.