PAN card is a very important document constituting one of your KYC proof. Whereas PAN is nothing but a Permanent Account Number allotted to you by the Income Tax Department on application made by any person defined under Income Tax Act. PAN is a number that acts as your identity in cases of filing your return, paying taxes etc. Now let us get familiar with the structure of PAN.
PAN is a 10 digit number containing alphabets as well as numbers. Thus we can say that PAN is made up of 10 digit alphanumeric number. It has a fixed format. The first 5 digits are made up using alphabets ranging from A to Z, the next 4 digits are made up of numbers from 0 to 9 and the last digit is again an alphabet from A to Z.
Again there are different fixed alphabets for fixed digit. In other words, first three alphabets are allotted randomly. The fourth one is based on the status of the individual. It means if the assessee is an individual than fourth digit will be ‘P’, if the assessee is a company than the fourth digit will be ‘C’, for Trust it is ‘T’, for Partnership Firms it is ‘F’, for Body of Individual it is ‘B’, for Association of Person the digit will be ‘A’, for HUF the same will be ‘H’, for Local Authority ‘L’ will be allotted, for Government Entity it will be ‘G’ and alphabet ‘J’ is allotted for Judicial Artificial person.
If we want to make it simple than the list can be as follows:
Individual : P
Company : C
Trust : T
Partnership Firm : F
Body of individual : B
Association of Persons: A
HUF : H
Local Authority : L
Government Entity : G
Judicial Artificial Person : J
Now let us move forward with the fifth digit allotted in the PAN. In case of individual, the fifth digit will be the first letter of surname / last name of the individual. If the assessee is not an individual, than the fifth digit will be the first letter of the name of the entity.
Your details such as your name, address, date of birth etc are registered with the Income Tax Department under your PAN. If you want to know your name registered with the Income tax department than you can find it out by following the following steps:
- First of all visit the site incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in
- Click on the link given named “know your PAN”
- You will be provided a form like structure and you will have to enter details like your Date of birth in case of individual or date of incorporation in case of other persons, Surname in case of Individual or name of the entity on other cases and enter the captcha as provided in the image
- Click on the submit button
- All the registered details will be displayed along with your jurisdiction.
The details maintained under the PAN by the Income Tax Department are accurate and reliable as the same are recorded after verifying them with the supporting documents. NSDL is the authority administering the receipt of application of PAN and allotting the PAN. It also provides facility of checking the application status of PAN once you have applied for your PAN. www.tin-nsdl.com is the website maintained by NSDL where the assessee can check the PAN application status. Application forms for PAN are also available on the same site. PAN application form can be downloaded and filled up and application can be made via NSDL Facilitation centres or the assessee can also opt for applying for PAN online through the official site of NSDL as mentioned above.