SHOMA PATNAIK | NT
PANAJI
Filing of income tax returns is likely to be a bigger pain than usual with the new rule of linking the permanent account number (PAN) with Aadhar card by July 31.
The new rule makes it compulsory for individual taxpayers to link the two vital documents as a perquisite to file returns. However, with most residents facing difficulty in doing the online linkage, there is a flood of anxious assesses these days, according to information received from chartered accountants and tax consultants.
Several chartered accountants said that they are flooded with visits from worried clients and are kept busy replying to the queries.
According to Sandip Bhandare of SP Bhandare and Associates, at least 25 per cent of his clients are facing difficulty in executing the linkage, thanks to discrepancy in names between the two documents. “Goan names are long and some people have double surnames. They are finding it difficult to match their PAN with Aadhar,” he said. He added that non-residents Goans, who do not have Aadhar are in a fix over “how to file returns.”
Chartered accountants said that they are of little help to their customers because the system is “online and beyond them.”
Chartered accountant Raghu Pikle, RK Pikle and Sons, said, “While doing the linkage, the system generates a one-time-password (OTP) and you are dead if you’ve changed the mobile and are currently using a different number. To solve the issue, we are advising our clients to update their Aadhar and see that the name as well as relevant details tally in both the documents,” said Pikle.
According to chartered accountant Parimal Kulkarni, the new rule is conceptually good but implementing it is proving to be a challenge. He said that several taxpayers have not referred to their Aadhar since it was made. “They need to ensure that the details are current and it includes their mobile numbers and email id.”
The new rule is to weed out people with fake PAN which they use for multiple transactions. “It is a good step but needs manual intervention to do the matching,” feels Bhandare. He says, “Rather than concentrating on filing tax returns of our clients, we are concentrating on advising them on linking the two accounts.”
Other chartered accountants said that the rule could result in delay in filing of returns by tax payers and the government needs to announce an extension in the deadline.
Initials, punctuations and spelling discrepancy make linking of Aadhar with PAN a pain. Even a small dot between initials can result in a system mismatch as many unlucky Goans are discovering.