On Friday, the Supreme Court put a partial stay on the government order about linking Aadhar and the PAN card for the Income Tax Return (ITR.) The SC said this will be on hold till the constitution bench decides on the matter.
The court also said this rule cannot be insisted on people as some do not possess an Aadhar card. The Income Tax Department improved the efforts to encourage people to link PAN with Aadhar. Most of the taxpayers have received emails on how to link PAN and Aadhar online. Also, the advertisements in national dailies by the government have also described how linking can be done through SMS.
The email by IT Department about linking by the e-filing team says, “This (linking of Aadhaar and PAN) will be useful for E-Verification of Income Tax returns using Aadhaar OTP (One-Time Password).”
The government had previously decided to lower the limit of cash transaction from Rs. 3 lakhs to Rs. 2 lakhs. This has been implemented so as to make the Aadhar number mandatory for filing income tax returns and applying for a PAN card.
These decisions were part of the finance bill amendments which put the Budget proposals into effect.
