Permanent Account Number (PAN) is
a ten-digit alphanumeric number, issued in the form of a laminated card, by the
Income Tax Department, to any “person” who applies for it or to whom the
department allots the number without an application.
PAN enables the department to
link all transactions of the “person” with the department. These transactions
include tax payments, TDS/TCS credits, returns of income/wealth/gift/FBT,
specified transactions, correspondence, and so on. PAN, thus, acts as an
identifier for the “person” with the tax department.
PAN was introduced to facilitates
linking of various documents, including payment of taxes, assessment, tax
demand, tax arrears etc. relating to an assessee, to facilitate easy retrieval
of information and to facilitate matching of information relating to investment,
raising of loans and other business activities of taxpayers collected through
various sources, both internal as well as external, for detecting and combating
tax evasion and widening of tax base.
A typical PAN is AFZPK7190K.
First three characters i.e. “AFZ”
in the above PAN are alphabetic series running from AAA to ZZZ
The 4th character represents the status of the PAN
holder, which can be one of the following:
·
C – Company
·
P – Person
·
H — HUF (Hindu Undivided Family)
·
F — Firm
·
A — Association of Persons (AOP)
·
T — AOP (Trust)
·
B — Body of Individuals (BOI)
·
L — Local Authority
·
J — Artificial Juridical Person
·
G — Government
So, an individual will have the 4th character as P.
Fifth character i.e. “K” in the
above PAN represents first character of the PAN holder’s last name/surname.
Note : If you change your surname after marriage or due to any other reason, your PAN card number will remain unchanged.
Note : If you change your surname after marriage or due to any other reason, your PAN card number will remain unchanged.
Next four characters i.e. “7190”
in the above PAN are sequential number running from 0001 to 9999.
Last character i.e. “K” in the
above PAN is an alphabetic check digit.