Tax payers, link your bank account with PAN; get IT refunds from March 1

New Delhi : Kind attention! The Income Tax Department has announced that it will only issue refunds via the e-mode into bank accounts of taxpayers only if they have linked their PAN with their accounts. The department said refunds will be sent to bank accounts as it will issue "only e-refunds from March 1, 2019."

The Income Tax Department in a public advisory mentioned to link PAN (permanent account number) with your bank account to get your refund directly, swiftly and securely. The officials also mentioned that bank account could be either savings, current, cash or overdraft.

Till date, the department used to issue refunds to taxpayers either in their bank accounts or through account payee cheques, in a case-to-case basis depending on the category of taxpayers. The communication added taxpayers can check if their bank account is linked with their PAN by logging onto the e-filing website: incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in

Those who have not linked their PAN with their bank account should provide it to their home bank branch and also validate this over the e-filing website of the I-T Department.

For quite some time, ITR department has been asking tax payers to mandatorily link PAN with Aadhaar and the process has to be completed by March 31 this year.

As per data updated till early this month, the I-T Department has so far issued 42 crore PANs, of which 23 crore have been linked with Aadhaar.

To inform, Aadhaar is issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to a resident of India while PAN is a 10-digit alphanumeric number allotted by the IT Department to a person, firm or entity.