Now, link Aadhaar with PAN via OTP

Besides, the tax department is planning to introduce an option on the e-filing portal through which taxpayers can choose to link the Aadhaar without changing the name by opting for a One-Time Password (OTP), provided that the year of birth of the person matches in both documents. 

With the linking of PAN with Aadhaar being made mandatory, individuals can log on to e-filing website of the income tax department or NSDL but the seeding cannot happen if the name is differently spelt in the two cards - like use of full name in PAN and initials in Aadhaar. 

In such cases, government has allowed a simple uploading of a scanned copy of PAN on the Aadhaar website. The tax department will start educating taxpayers from this week through media outreach on ways to link the PAN with Aadhaar, an official told PTI. 

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had through amendment to tax proposals in the Finance Bill of the Budget for 2017-18, had made Aadhaar mandatory for filing income tax returns and provided for linking of PAN with Aadhaar to curb tax evasion through use of multiple PAN cards. The e-filing portal has already activated a functionality of linking PAN with Aadhaar. 

Over 1.08 crore assessees have already Aadhaar-linked PAN but the number is abysmally low as there are over 25 crore PAN card holders in the country, while Aadhaar has been issued to 111 crore people. As per statistics with the tax department, only 6 crore people file income tax returns at present. 

The official said that linking of PAN with Aadhaar should not be cumbersome for people whose registered mobile number with the Unique Identification Authority of India is active. 

“In case the taxpayer is unable to link PAN with Aadhaar because of discrepancy in name, we are advising them to log in to the Aadhaar website, request for a name change and upload a scanned copy of PAN card as supported proof. This is the simplest way to update name in Aadhaar and only the registered mobile number has to be functional,” the Income Tax official said.