PAN and aadhaar linking ideated to find out individuals with multiple PANs or avoid instances of tax evasion has unearthed some high value suspicious transactions valued at Rs. 33,000 crore which shall now be dealt against by the tax department if it finds that the transactions deviate from the actual disclosed income.

Of the 37 crore people having PAN, only around 17.4 crore have linked their PAN with Aadhaar which the department has been constantly pushing for. The number of taxpayers who have added their aadhaar information in PAN and filed tax returns now stands at some 4.4 crore. In a earlier notification by the CBDT, the deadline to mandatorily link Aadhaar and PAN has been extended to June 30.

Notably, some of the transactions such as sale of immovable property, purchase of vehicles, opening FD account with a bank require individuals without PAN to submit a form it they do not own a permanent account number called Form 60 or 61. But with Aadhaar and PAN linking, several of the individuals who denied having PAN through the false declaration were found as per a leading news daily report. Also, some unscrupulous individuals were identified having more than one PANs.

In FY17 and FY 18, as many as 1.65 crore transactions have been reported with Form 61 (individuals with agriculture income but no PAN used it) even in a case when the department has allotted the number to them but they did not reported it while making the transaction.

Also, at the same time reports have come in which say that for getting mobile phone SIMs, aadhaar document is not mandatory.

Wirh PTI Inputs