For your financial transactions, Permanent Account Number (PAN) holds a significance and you need this crucial document while taking a home loan, buying a car, or taking personal loan. The PAN card is also commonly used while opening a new bank account, demat accout or even while joing new office, one is asked to give PAN card details.
The PAN card is issued by Income Tax department through NSDL or UTI. It is a 10-digit alphanumeric ID card. It is unique to each income tax assessee and is a must for filing income tax returns (ITR) and carrying out several transactions. It is unique to each income tax assessee and is a must for filing income tax returns (ITR) and carrying out several transactions.
PAN card can be verified as income tax department has complete database of all taxpayers. The PAN verification service, which can also be useful for individuals, is available on the income tax department's website.
The Income Tax Department conducts a third-party verification to verify the identity and address of the PAN applications along with genuineness of documents submitted by them during PAN application.
The Income Tax Department also provides the facility of online PAN verification under which an individual or entity can know/verify the PAN. In order to verify the PAN, a user is required to log in at https://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in and navigate to ‘Profile Settings’ then ‘My Profile’ to view the details. Under this facility, PAN verification is screen-based, file-based and software (API, i.e.server to server talk) based.
Even banks, offices or even government bodies which need to verify several PAN cards in bulk need to register themselves as Bulk PAN Verification Agency on the e-filing portal after which they can go to bulk PAN query and click on upload query in the specified format and then click on submit.
Recently, the linking of the PAN with the Aadhaar-PAN has been made "mandatory" for those filing an Income Tax Return (ITR) and this procedure has to be "completed" by March 31 this year. As per data updated till early this month, the I-T Department has so far issued 42 crore PANs, of which 23 crore have been linked with Aadhaar. While Aadhaar is issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to a resident of India, PAN is a 10-digit alphanumeric number allotted by the IT Department to a person, firm or entity.
