The Income Tax department of India has announced that the Permanent Account Number (PAN) will become inoperative if it is not linked with Aadhaar by March 31, 2020. The deadline for linking of PAN and Aadhar has been extended from December 31, 2019, and the current deadline ends on March 31, 2020.
Indians living in Kuwait have many queries regarding Pan and Aadhaar requirements and the recent announcement that requires two cards to be linked has contributed to further concerns as to whether or not an NRI in Kuwait has to link the two.
A PAN (Permanent Account Number) card is a document issued by the Income Tax department of India and it is mandatory for an NRI if they have got a taxable income in India or want to make any sizeable investments in the country.
Whereas, Aadhar is a 12 digit Unique Identification Number (UID) to residents or Indian passport holders. Earlier NRIs were not eligible for Aadhaar unless they had stayed in the country for more than 6 months or more in the past year. However, India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in July 2019 proposed to issue Aadhaar cards to NRIs upon arrival in India without having to wait for the mandatory 180-day-stay.
Many Indian expatriates praised the move as the lack of an Aadhaar card had led them to struggle with issues when getting a PAN card, registering a property, having kids study at Indian institutions, buying SIM cards, getting a new driving license or renewing an existing one.
According to Section 139AA of Income-tax Act, an individual is required to link Pan with Aadhar failing which the pan will become incorporative. As per the government circular issued, Pan card issued on or before July 2017 is required to link to Aadhar, this can be done by SMS or online services.
However, this announcement is not relevant to those NRIs who only have one of the cards, either Aadhar or Pan. And to those people who do not have any financial dealings in India, whether it is a property investment, children’s college or university fee or putting up and existing property for rent. But only for those NRIs who are involved in the financial dealings of these sorts or have stock investments. They are required to link their Pan card to Aadhar.
Pan card and Aadhar card can be linked online by visiting the income Tax department website- https://www.incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in/home
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