How-to PAN Aadhaar KYC

How to link PAN with Aadhaar on the Income Tax portal

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Linking your permanent account number (PAN) with Aadhaar on the Income Tax e-filing portal is the single fix that keeps a PAN operative, and an operative PAN is the gate every Indian securities account passes through. A demat or trading application runs PAN as its primary know your customer identifier; once a PAN goes inoperative, the KYC registration agency treats it as not furnished, and the broker cannot complete onboarding. This guide walks the current incometax.gov.in flow end to end: the Rs 1,000 late fee, the e-Pay Tax challan, the Link Aadhaar request, and the status check.

The procedure matters most to two groups. The first is anyone opening a Zerodha account , or any other broking account, whose PAN check has bounced. The second is existing holders whose PAN slipped into inoperative status and now find refunds withheld and tax deducted at the higher rate. Both situations trace to the same root, an unlinked Aadhaar, and both clear the same way.

Conflict-of-interest disclosure. This guide is published by WebNotes Editorial Team for informational purposes. WebNotes has no commercial relationship with the Income Tax Department, UIDAI, or any PAN service provider. No affiliate commission is earned from successful completion of the procedure.

Step-by-step procedure

The numbered procedure in the infobox above is the canonical flow. The sections below expand each step with the exact portal labels, the fee mechanics, and the error paths, so you can execute without switching to another reference. The whole sequence has two halves: pay the fee and wait, then file the link request and check status.

Go to the Income Tax e-filing portal at incometax.gov.in. The homepage carries a Quick Links panel on the left; click Link Aadhaar there. You can also reach it post-login through Dashboard, then Profile, then Link Aadhaar to PAN. The pre-login route needs nothing but your PAN and Aadhaar number, so most filers use it.

Enter your 10-character PAN and your 12-digit Aadhaar number, then click Validate. The portal now checks whether the Rs 1,000 fee has already been paid against this PAN. What happens next depends on that check.

2. Pay the Rs 1,000 fee through e-Pay Tax

If you have not paid, the portal returns a pop-up reading Payments details not found. Payment of the fee is a prerequisite to submitting the link request, so this is expected on a first attempt. Click Continue To Pay Through e-Pay Tax.

On the e-Pay Tax page, confirm your PAN, enter a mobile number, and verify the OTP. You reach the payment screen; click Proceed on the Income Tax tile. Set the Type of Payment, the Minor Head, to Other Receipts (500), and where the newer challan flow asks, select the sub-type Fee for delay in linking PAN with Aadhaar. The amount pre-fills as Rs 1,000. The fee must sit in a single challan; the portal does not aggregate two part-payments, so do not split it. Generate the challan, pick a payment mode, and complete payment on your bank’s website. Keep the challan copy, because the same challan can be reused if the link request later fails.

3. Wait 4 to 5 working days for the fee to reflect

This wait trips people up. The payment made at e-Pay Tax, or through Protean, the former NSDL, takes a few days to post back to the e-filing portal. The Income Tax Department advises filers to raise the PAN-Aadhaar link request only after 4 to 5 working days. Submit it the same day and the portal still reads Payments details not found, because the challan has not yet reconciled. There is no way to force the reconciliation faster; the wait is structural.

After the wait, return to Quick Links and click Link Aadhaar again. Enter PAN and Aadhaar and click Validate. This time, with the fee reconciled, the portal shows a pop-up reading Your payment details are verified. Click Continue on that pop-up. Enter the mandatory details the form asks for, then click the Link Aadhaar button.

If you are a registered user, the post-login path is Dashboard, then Profile, then Link Aadhaar PAN, then Link Aadhaar; the validation and confirmation steps are identical.

5. Validate with OTP

The portal sends a 6-digit OTP to the mobile number you supplied in the request step. Enter it and click Validate. The portal confirms: the request for linking Aadhaar has been submitted successfully. The request now goes to UIDAI for biometric and demographic authentication; the actual link is not instant, it processes in the background.

To confirm the outcome, go to Quick Links, click Link Aadhaar Status, enter PAN and Aadhaar, and click View Link Aadhaar Status. Post-login, the same status sits on the Dashboard or under My Profile, then Link Aadhaar Status. A successful link reads PAN is linked to Aadhaar. If the status reads that linking is in progress, UIDAI has not finished authenticating; check again the next day before assuming failure.

What an inoperative PAN does to a trading account

The reason this is not a bureaucratic chore is Rule 114AAA of the Income-tax Rules. Under the rule, where a person’s PAN has become inoperative, it is deemed that the PAN was not furnished, intimated, or quoted, and the person bears all the consequences under the Income Tax Act for not furnishing it. CBDT Circular No. 3 of 2023, dated 28 March 2023, lists those consequences: no income tax refund is granted against an inoperative PAN, no interest accrues on a withheld refund, and tax is deducted and collected at the higher rates under Sections 206AA and 206CC.

For a securities account the bite is sharper than the tax penalties suggest. PAN is the spine of capital-markets KYC. The depositories and brokers run PAN as a mandatory KYC field, so a PAN that is deemed not furnished fails the KYC check outright. That is why a Zerodha account gets rejected when the applicant’s PAN is inoperative, and why an existing demat holder can find transactions blocked once the PAN flips. Making the PAN operative again, by linking Aadhaar and clearing the fee, is the only remedy; there is no broker-side override.

The CBDT deadline and fee context

The Rs 1,000 fee is a late fee, not a service charge. PAN-Aadhaar linking was free until 31 March 2022. From 1 April 2022 a fee applied, set at Rs 500 for the first quarter and Rs 1,000 thereafter, payable under Minor head 500. The original linking deadline of 31 March 2023 was extended to 30 June 2023; PANs not linked by then became inoperative from 1 July 2023.

A narrower relief applies to a specific cohort: individuals who were allotted a PAN on the basis of an Aadhaar Enrolment ID, rather than the Aadhaar number itself. They were given until 31 December 2025 to complete the link using their actual Aadhaar number, failing which the PAN becomes inoperative from 1 January 2026. For everyone else who missed the 2023 cut-off, the route is the same one in this guide: pay the Rs 1,000, wait, file, and check status. Tax rules and deadlines change with each Finance Act; this guide reflects the position as of June 2026, and for a complex tax situation or a large refund at stake, consult a Chartered Accountant before acting.

See also

External references

References

  1. Income Tax Department, Link Aadhaar user manual, incometax.gov.in (as of 19 June 2026); Rs 1,000 fee payable under Minor head 500 in a single challan.
  2. CBDT Notification No. 15 of 2023, dated 28 March 2023, substituting Rule 114AAA of the Income-tax Rules, 1962.
  3. CBDT Circular No. 3 of 2023, dated 28 March 2023, on the consequences of PAN becoming inoperative.
  4. Income-tax Act 1961, Sections 139AA, 206AA, and 206CC, on Aadhaar quoting and higher-rate TDS and TCS.

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