No more Atal Pension Yojana benefits for income tax payers from October 1

According to a notification, income tax payers will not be allowed to enroll in the government’s social security scheme Atal Pension Yojana (APY) from October 1.

The government launched APY on 1st June 2015 to provide social security mainly to the workers of the unorganized sector. The subscribers of the scheme get a minimum guaranteed pension of ₹1,000 to ₹5,000 per month after attaining the age of 60 years depending on their contribution.

“… With effect from 1st October, 2022, any citizen who is or has been an income tax payer shall not be eligible to join APY,” the Finance Ministry said in the notification.

The ministry has changed its previous notification on APY.

The new notification issued on Wednesday will not be applicable to those customers who have joined or joined the scheme before October 1, 2022.

If a subscriber, who has joined on or after October 1, 2022, is subsequently found to be an income tax payer on or before the date of application, the APY account will be closed and the pension amount accumulated till now will be given. customer, the notification said.

Under the Income Tax Act, people with taxable income up to Rs 2.5 lakh are not required to pay income tax.

Currently, all Indian citizens between the age of 18-40 years can join APY through branches of banks or post offices where one has a savings bank account.

The government had co-contributed 50% of the total contribution or ₹1,000 per annum, whichever is less, to each eligible subscriber who joined the scheme during the period from June 2015 to March 2016. This was also subject to the condition that the subscriber was not a beneficiary of any social security scheme and was also not an income tax payer.

Those APY customers got government co-contribution for a period of five years from 2015-16 to 2019-20.

Over 99 lakh APY accounts were opened during the last financial year, taking the total subscriber base to 4.01 crore at the end of March 2022.