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Case lawCBDT Circulars & Instructions › Statutory position — section 139AA(2) and rule 114AAA: what an inoperative PAN actually does, and the CBDT circulars that undo it
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Statutory position — section 139AA(2) and rule 114AAA: what an inoperative PAN actually does, and the CBDT circulars that undo it

CPC has raised a short-deduction demand on me because my payee's PAN was inoperative for want of Aadhaar linking. What exactly does an inoperative PAN do, and is there any Board relief?

CPC has raised a short-deduction demand on me because my payee's PAN was inoperative for want of Aadhaar linking. What exactly does an inoperative PAN do, and is there any Board relief?

An inoperative PAN carries four consequences and only four, and rule 114AAA(3) lists them: no refund of tax is made, no interest is payable on that refund for the period, tax deductible under Chapter XVII-B is deducted at the higher rate under section 206AA, and tax collectible under Chapter XVII-BB is collected at the higher rate under section 206CC. The third and fourth of those fall on the DEDUCTOR or COLLECTOR, not on the person who failed to link, which is why the demand lands on someone who did nothing wrong. The Board has issued a sequence of circulars relieving the deductor where the PAN is made operative by a date, and the sequence — Circular No. 3/2023 dated 28 March 2023, Circular No. 6/2024 dated 23 April 2024 and Circular No. 9/2025 dated 21 July 2025 — is the first thing to check, before any argument on merits.

Decided by the CBDT Circulars & Instructions (Not applicable — statutory text) on 2023-07-01, reported as Income-tax Act 1961, s.139AA(2) proviso; Income-tax Rules 1962, rule 114AAA, substituted by the Income-tax (Fourth Amendment) Rules 2023 with effect from 1 April 2023 (the department's own footnote on the rule page), the substituting instrument being Notification No. 15 of 2023 dated 28 March 2023 as recited in CBDT Circular No. 6/2024; consequences effective from 1 July 2023 as specified by the Board under rule 114AAA(4). It bears on section 139AA, section 139AA(2), section 206AA, section 206CC, section 194Q, section 194-O, section 194-IA, section 200A, section 206CB, section 119(2)(b) of the Income Tax Act 1961, in TDS Defaults, Refunds, Interest & Condonation, Demand, Recovery & Stay and How Tax Law Is Read matters.

Still good law. This is the rule and the circulars themselves, not a decision about them. Rule 114AAA was read in full from the department's own rule page, which carries no year stamp; the section 139AA text was read from four departmental pages stamped 2019 (No. 2), 2020, 2021 and 2022, all identical, and independently from the reproduction of section 139AA(2) inside the ITAT Delhi order in Manoj Kumar dated 31 August 2026. Because no departmental page for section 139AA carrying a stamp later than 2022 could be located, a subsequent amendment to that section cannot be excluded. The circulars were not retrieved in their own PDFs — see the editor note — and are stated from the full text of Circular No. 6/2024 reproduced in the Madras High Court judgment of 6 September 2024 and from the recital of Circulars 3/2023 and 9/2025 in the ITAT Delhi orders in Sanchit Gupta (21 May 2026) and Manoj Kumar (31 August 2026). Whether the Board has issued any circular AFTER Circular No. 9/2025 of 21 July 2025 could not be established on this pass: the department's circulars listing page renders no rows and the session's web-search budget was exhausted, so a later circular may exist and has not been ruled out.

Why it matters

This is now the single commonest automated demand in the system, and almost every element of it is counter-intuitive. First, the trigger is not the deductor's default at all: rule 114AAA(1) makes the PAN inoperative because the HOLDER failed to intimate his Aadhaar number by 31 March 2022, and the deductor has no means of compelling him. Second, the consequences do not run from the date the PAN went inoperative: sub-rule (4) says they have effect 'from the date specified by the Board', and the Board specified 1 July 2023, so a transaction before that date should not attract the higher rate at all. Third, the relief is by circular, not by statute, so it is keyed to dates and nothing else — the window is the whole argument. Fourth, the higher rate is not always twenty per cent: section 206AA(1) prescribes the higher of the rate in the relevant section, the rate in force, or twenty per cent, but the two provisos cut that to five per cent where the deduction is under section 194-O or section 194Q. A purchaser under section 194Q deducting 0.1 per cent therefore faces 5 per cent, not 20 — a fifty-fold multiplier on a large turnover, which is how these demands reach a crore. Fifth, rule 114AAA(2) gives the taxpayer no instant cure: once the fee under rule 114(5A) is paid, the PAN becomes operative 'within thirty days from the date of intimation', so a deductor who discovers the problem on the last day of a quarter cannot fix it in time. Note finally what is NOT on the list in sub-rule (3): the PAN does not become invalid, the return is not treated as unfiled, and nothing in the rule disallows the payee's own TDS credit. The 2017 text of the proviso to section 139AA(2), which deemed the PAN 'invalid', was replaced; anyone advising off the older wording is advising off a repealed text.

Binding on the department, not on the assessee or the courts. An assessee may rely on a circular that is beneficial to them.

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