Many NRIs went into panic mode as over 10 crore PANs of NRIs were made inactive, and their investments and bank balances in India might get frozen.
The Income Tax Department clarified why the PAN cards of some Non-Resident Indians (NRI) and Overseas Indian Citizens (OCI) became inoperable.
NRIs who haven’t filed Income Tax Returns in the last 3 years or informed the Assessing Officer of their residential status, and OCIs who applied for PAN under resident status but didn’t update their residential status or file an ITR in the last 3 years had their PANs rendered inoperative.
The deadline to link PAN with Aadhar was June 30. This step was taken to help prevent duplicate entries in the PAN database. The department has now urged NRIs and OCIs to update their residential status with supporting documents.
