Your bank accounts may be blocked if not linked with Aadhaar by April 30

The Income Tax department on Tuesday issued a fresh notification making Aadhaar number and self-certification a mandatory for accounts opened from July 2014 to August 2015.   

According to the notification, account holders will have to submit their know your customer (KYC) details and Aadhaar number to banks and financial institutions by April 30 and self-certify them to comply with Foreign Tax Compliance Act or FATCA.

The department also asked the financial institutions to inform the customers about the repercussions if they fail to submit the details. It said: "The account holders may be informed that, in case self-certifications are not provided till April 30, 2017, the accounts would be blocked, which would mean that the financial institution would prohibit the account holder from effecting any transaction with respect to such accounts."

It, however, clarified that the transactions by the account holder in such blocked accounts may be permitted once the self-certification is obtained and due diligence completed.

As per Income Tax notification, these financial institutions were asked to obtain self-certification and carry out due diligence for all individual and entity accounts opened from July 1, 2014 to August 31, 2015 to comply with the FATCA signed by India and the United States.

FATCA is a tax information sharing agreement which was signed to bolster the efforts for automatic exchange of financial information between the two nations about tax evaders.