Linking Aadhaar With PAN Made Mandatory: How To Do It

As the government insists that one's Aadhaar account and Permanent Account Number (PAN) should be linked by July 31 this year to pay income taxes, millions of Indians have faced issues with syncing the two accounts due to small differences in how their names are spelt. This problem can happen even if there are minor differences in how the name is recorded -- like the use of one's full name in PAN and initials in Aadhaar. Issues have also cropped up due to use of special characters in the initials and punctuation that often form a person's name as Aadhaar doesn't recognize such characters but PAN does.

In such cases, while one solution is to apply for a name correction in either Aadhaar or PAN card - both time consuming procedures - the government has stepped in to provide a simple solution for frustrated potential taxpayers.
 

• If an individual's name on the Aadhaar does not match his/her name on the PAN card, the person can now simply upload a scanned copy of PAN to get the work done. 
• A taxpayer can also log in to the Aadhaar website and request for a change in the name which will be verified using a one-time password on the phone number registered with the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI)
• One-Time Passwords (OTP) will be used in cases where there are people who have gotten married and changed their surname. In such instances the tax department will give an OTP option wherein the password would be sent to the Aadhaar-registered mobile number. The tax department, on its part, would match the year of birth of the taxpayer with the Aadhaar database.
• The tax department is also 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 OTP, provided that the year of birth of the person matches in both documents.
• The tax department will start educating taxpayers from this week through media outreach on ways to link the PAN with Aadhaar, an official told news agency Press Trust of India. 

Over 1.08 crore assessees already have 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 six crore people file income tax returns at present.

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