Link your PAN to Aadhar by December 31 or it may become inoperative

There are four simple ways to link PAN to Aadhaar; make the most of deadline to avoid hassles later

There are only seven days left for linking your Income-tax permanent account number (PAN) with your Aadhaar–the deadline is December 31. Linking PAN to Aadhar is mandatory if you want to file your income tax return. Says Balwant Jain, a Mumbai-based tax expert:

“Those who have not linked their PAN to their Aadhar by this date will find their PAN becoming inoperative.” Initially, the authorities had proposed to render the PAN invalid for non-linkage by September this year. However, rendering it invalid would have put a question mark on all transactions done using the PAN Card prior to that date as well. Jain says, “In order to protect the validity of the transactions that have already been effected, the PAN will now become inoperative by December 31, if it isn’t linked to Aadhar by this date.” This effectively means that you will no longer be able to use it with prospective effect. All retrospective transactions will remain valid.

That said, an inoperative PAN would most likely be useless for any kind of transactions. After December 31, one will be obliged to quote it along with the Aadhaar number while filing an income tax return (ITR) unless specifically exempted. There are two ways to do do the linking, offline and online.

Here’s the step-by-step procedure:

The first step: Check if your PAN and Aadhar have already been linked. Many might have done this already and forgotten about it. For those who are already registered users of the income tax filing website and have filed returns in the past, there’s a possibility that the PAN and Aadhaar have already been linked. If you aren’t sure…