Even if you have Aadhaar, linking it to PAN is easier said than done

Merely having an Aadhaar number issued to you by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) does not mean you will be able to link it to your Permanent Account Number (PAN) during filing of income tax returns.

The income tax department website gives you the option to link the Aadhaar number to the PAN once you login into your personal profile. You are required to provide the Aadhaar number there. The income tax department then verifies your name, date of birth, gender as per PAN and Aadhaar number with UIDAI. Only if the data matches, it will be linked. Similarly, if there is a name change post marriage on one document and not on others, Aadhaar linking will be disallowed.

Officers at the help line of the income tax department said that one can use other agencies like NSDL to file their returns. However, they remained mum when asked about how to rectify issues related to different names once Aadhaar became mandatory.

The income tax department has recently started accepting initials that can be put on the PAN card. However, you will be required to put your full name while applying for a verification of data. For instance, if your official name is M Ramamurthy where the full name is Madurai Ramamurthy where Ramamurthy is the first name, I-T will allow initials only for the first name. Hence, you can either print your name on the PAN card as either Ramamurthy or R Madurai.

Once you try to link PAN to your Aadhaar card which accepts initials, there is bound to be a name mismatch. This will lead to a rejection of request for linking Aadhaar card. In several parts of the country, especially the south of India, the names of villages are often suffixed or prefixed to the name of an individual. Here, any name except the first name of the person is considered as surname and will have to be mentioned in full on the PAN card.

Tax consultants are of the view that where there are different names on different identity proofs, the government will need to either provide them more time or have a separate mechanism to resolve such discrepancies.

While the tax department has a mechanism to rectify names on the PAN card, considering the number of people who will have different names on different documents, meeting the July 1 deadline will be an arduous task.

The Finance Bill 2017, which was passed by the Lok Sabha, has proposed that Aadhaar will now be compulsory from July 1 to file one’s income tax returns. For retaining your PAN number, too, you need to link this number to your IT account.0