It`s official! Deadline to link Aadhaar with PAN extended till March 31

New Delhi: The government on Friday extended deadline to link PAN with Aadhaar by three months to March 31.

Government has made it mandatory for verifying bank account and PAN to weed out black money and bring unaccounted wealth to book. The same for SIM has been mandated to establish identity of mobile phone users.

“It has come to notice that some of the taxpayers have not yet completed the linking of PAN with Aadhaar. Therefore, to facilitate the process of linking, it has been decided to further extend the time for linking of Aadhaar with PAN till 31.03.2018,” CBDT in a circular said.

The earlier deadline was December 31, 2017. 

This is the third extension given by the government to individuals to link the Permanent Account Number (PAN) with the biometric ID.

The Centre had already informed the Supreme Court that it is willing to extend till March 31 the deadline fixed for mandatory linking of Aadhaar to avail various services and welfare schemes.

Under the provisions of recently introduced section 139AA of the Income-tax Act, 1961 (the Act), with effect from 01.07.2017, all taxpayers having Aadhaar Number or Enrolment Number are required to link the same with Permanent Account Number (PAN).

The Income-Tax Act was amended in March 2017 to make Aadhaar mandatory for PAN cards. On June 1, 2017, PML Rules have been amended to make Aadhaar mandatory for linking all bank accounts, insurance, pension, mutual funds and DMAT accounts.