Even though the Supreme Court has made it mandatory to file the Income Tax returns with Aadhaar card and has asked people to get it linked with their PAN cards before March 31, several people have failed to do it.
But now, the income tax return filers must hurry and make sure that their Aadhar card is linked to their PAN cards otherwise they shall suffer consequences.
Even as the deadline to link the two is coming closer, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) Chairman Sushil Chandra, while addressing an Assocham event on Thursday said that only 23 crore PAN card holders have so far linked their cards with biometric ID Aadhaar.
This means more than half of PAN card holders are yet to get their cards linked.
And if these people do not get their cards linked, they may be up for trouble, said Chandra, as CBDT might cancel their PAN.
"By linking with Aadhaar, we will know whether there are any duplicate PANs or not. And if there are certain duplicate PANs... If it is not linked, we may cancel the PAN also," he warned.
Chandra said that once Aadhaar is linked with PAN which in turn is linked with the bank account, the IT department can trace the spending pattern and other details of the assessee.
He also said that it would also be easier to gauge whether the benefits of welfare schemes are availed by eligible persons or not.
He added that this year 6.31 crore returns have been filed, which is much more than 5.44 crore persons who had filed last year.
"It is not true that if we reduce tax rates, compliance goes up. During this year we have followed the policy of finding the non-filers. We have got third party information and we are checking whether persons are filing returns or not, whether adequate income is being shown," he said.
The Supreme Court in September last year had declared the Centre's flagship Aadhaar scheme constitutionally valid.
A five-judge constitution bench had pronounced that it would not be mandatory to link Aadhaar to bank accounts, and telecom service providers cannot seek its linking for mobile connections.
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