Linkage of PAN with Aadhaar mandatory from A.Y. 2019-20

Quoting of Aadhaar and Linking with PAN is mandatory from Assessment Year 2019-20

The Apex Court in it’s recent judgement dated 04.02.2019 in the case of Union of India vs. Shreya Sen reported in [2019] 104 taxmann.com 160 (SC) has held that linkage of PAN with Aadhaar is mandatory and make it clear that from Assessment Year 2019-20 onwards quoting of Aadhaar in Income Tax Return is mandatory.

The aforesaid matter was pending for consideration before the Hon’ble Supreme Court to decide the vires of Section 139AA of the Income Tax Act. Being pending the matter, the Delhi High Court  vide it’s order dated 24.02.2018, passed in Petition (Civil) No.7444 of 2018, had permitted the respondents herein to file the Income Tax Return for the Assessment Year 2018-19 without linkage of their Aadhaar and PAN numbers and it was also directed that the Income Tax Department would not insist on production of their number of Aadhaar enrolment.

Now the Supreme Court has clarified the issue vide its aforementioned verdict. In sync with the aforesaid judgement of the Hon’ble Supreme Court, the CBDT vide its Press Release dated 31.03.2019 has extended the date for linking of Aadhaar number with PAN upto 30.09.2019 and further clarified that w.e.f. 01.04.2019 it is mandatory to quote and link Aadhaar number while filing the return of income.

Concluding Remarks

In view of the aforesaid judgement and the CBDT press release it is advisable to timely link the Aadhaar with PAN for hassle free filing of  income tax returns for Assessment Year 2019-20. In case the assessee needs some corrections in there Aadhaar or PAN data they must get timely corrected the same otherwise the 11th hour efforts may lead to costly affairs.

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