Saturday 20 / April / 2024
Muscat: Indian expatriates in Oman have expressed relief at the deadline provided to all Indian citizens to link their PAN and Aadhaar cards has been extended.
Although Indian nationals were expected to link their cards by 31 December, 2019, following which any financial transaction they undertook would not go through, that deadline has since been pushed forward to March 31.
A statement from the Income Tax Department of India said, “The due date for linking of the PAN with the Aadhaar card as specified under sub-section two of Section 139AA of the Income-tax Act, 1961 has been extended from 31st December, 2019 to 31st March, 2020, according to notification no. 107 of 2019 dated 30 December 2019, issued by the Central Board of Direct Taxes.”
Rakesh Dasgupta, an Indian from Sohar, said, “I had completely forgotten about the need to link the two together, because as an Indian living abroad, you sometimes forget about the different formalities required to conduct transactions in India. To be honest, some of the formalities we have to get through every time we go back to India for our holidays can get quite tedious.”
Anurag Kumar, another Indian in Oman, said he only remembered he had to link his Aadhaar and his PAN once the Income Tax Department had sent out a reminder. On 27 December, the IT department send out a notice that said, “The last date to link your PAN with the Aadhaar is 31 December 2019. Not linking your PAN with Aadhaar on or before 31 December shall make your PAN inoperative.”
“I saw it on the 29th and decided to do it immediately,” he explained.
Straightforward procedure.
“It’s a pretty straightforward procedure. You just go to the site, enter your PAN and Aadhaar details, and then your full name, and the system processes your request. The system does say that there will be time taken to process the request, but it happens almost instantaneously, and you get a confirmation immediately.”
This is the second time that there has been an extension in recent months when it comes to linking the two cards together.
The original date to complete this was 30 September, 2019, but that was extended to the end of this year, and it has now been pushed forward to 31 March, 2020.
To link the cards, please visit www.incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in. Once on the site, those who wish to follow the procedure will need to select the ‘Link Aadhaar’ option on the left-hand side of the homepage, which will connect them to a site that requires them to enter their Aadhaar and PAN details, as well as their name, as listed on the card.
Applicants will also need to enter a Captcha code, while visually challenged users can request an OTP to be sent to their mobile phones. Once done, users need to select the ‘Link Aadhaar’ button at the bottom, with the linking process only taking a few seconds.
Once completed, users need to return to the home page, select the ‘Link Aadhaar’ option once again, enter their Aadhaar and PAN details and check the status of their application.
