Taxpayers have a reprieve from the Government. The deadline to link Aadhaar with PAN has been extended from August to 31st December 2017 - an extension of four months. Earlier, taxpayers had been told that even if they filed their ITR by the due date of 5th August, they would have to link their Aadhaar with their PAN by 31st August to be eligible for a processing of their tax returns.

One of the main reasons for this is that the Government received several complaints that people were unable to link their Aadhaar with their PAN because their names were different on both.

The tax department had earlier stated on July 31 stated that "unless a finding is made that Aadhaar is constitutionally not valid, tax return filers will need to link their PAN with Aadhaar by August 31, 2017." 

Non resident Indians, citizens of Assam, Meghalaya and Jammu & Kashmir, and those over 80 years of age are exempt from this directive if they don’t have an Aadhaar or an Aadhaar enrolment ID.

Concurrently, the Supreme Court is hearing petitions challenging the Government’s right to mandate Aadhaar for various administrative purposes. The next hearing is in November and could shape the nature of the role that Aadhaar would play in many transactions that the citizenry have with the Government. 

To learn how to link your PAN to your Aadhaar card, read here.