The Income Tax Department has been advertising linking Aadhaar to PAN by 31 March 2019 for quite some time now. The previous deadline of 30 June 2018 was extended for a good 9 months period for residents to make any changes to the details in the PAN and Aadhaar that may be mismatched and link the two.

The IT department's recent tweet said, "Link your AADHAAR with PAN today to enjoy seamless Income Tax services online."

The tweets and advertisements do not mention the consequences of not linking Aadhaar and PAN. But, with just two more days left to do the mandatory linking, one may wonder if their PAN becomes invalid on failing to do so.

Residents

For income tax purposes, you are a resident in India, if you were residing in India for at least 182 days in the year that is taken into account for such a calculation. Now, if you are a resident, you are eligible to get an Aadhaar number and if you are eligible, you are required by law to link it to a PAN that you could be holding.

After the Aadhaar Act, a new section was inserted under section 139A in the Income Tax Act, namely
"139AA: Quoting of Aadhaar number.-(1) Every person who is eligible to obtain Aadhaar number shall, on or after the 1st day of July, 2017, quote Aadhaar number-

(i) in the application form for allotment of permanent account number;
(ii) in the return of income:

Provided that where the person does not possess the Aadhaar Number, the Enrolment ID of Aadhaar application form issued to him at the time of enrolment shall be quoted in the application for permanent account number or, as the case may be, in the return of income furnished by him.

(2) Every person who has been allotted permanent account number as on the 1st day of July, 2017, and who is eligible to obtain Aadhaar number, shall intimate his Aadhaar number to such authority in such form and manner as may be prescribed, on or before a date to be notified by the Central Government in the Official Gazette:

Provided that in case of failure to intimate the Aadhaar number, the permanent account number allotted to the person shall be deemed to be invalid and the other provisions of this Act shall apply, as if the person had not applied for allotment of permanent account number."

This means that if one fails to link Aadhaar with their PAN, the former will cease to be valid as if one never had a PAN.

NRI

If you are a non-resident Indian (NRI), you may not have an Aadhaar, however, you need to hold a PAN if you have taxable income in India.

According to the FAQ section on UIDAI's official website, "only a resident individual is entitled to obtain Aadhaar......Accordingly, the requirement to quote Aadhaar as per section 139AA of the Income-tax Act shall not apply to an individual who is not a resident as per the Aadhaar Act, 2016. Moreover, Filing details of the Aadhaar number while submitting Income Tax returns from July 2017 does not apply to NRIs."