The Income Tax Department issued permanent account number (PAN) has been widely used in filing income tax returns and several other money-related purposes. A person is required to quote the PAN card on withdrawing more
than Rs 50,000 from the bank account, depositing more than Rs 50,000 in the account and the government has made it mandatory to provide the PAN details on the big-ticket purchases.
than Rs 50,000 from the bank account, depositing more than Rs 50,000 in the account and the government has made it mandatory to provide the PAN details on the big-ticket purchases.
Recently, in the Budget 2019-20, the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman proposed to introduce Aadhaar-PAN interchangeability following which the taxpayers will become eligible for filing income-tax returns by quoting Aadhaar card number in place of PAN card. The interchangeability of Aadhaar card and PAN card for filing income tax returns has been primarily proposed in order to simplify the compliances involved in ITR filing and to provide the income tax filing facility to the people who are not having PAN cards.
Still, people who are not having a PAN card can get an e-PAN instantly from the Income Tax Department. The Income Tax Department has provided the facility of e-PAN in order to make it easier for the taxpayers. According to Minister of State for Finance Anurag Singh Thakur, the government is planning to incorporate a PAN/TAN processing centre with which the centre will be able to allot e-PANs in real-time or a maximum of 10 minutes.
According to the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), e-PAN cards allotted to individuals will be equally valid as compared to the physical PAN cards. According to the Tax Information Centre of the Income Tax Department, the facility of e-PAN is only available for PAN card holders whose latest PAN application has been processed through NSDL e-Governance and or the e-filing portal of Income Tax Department.
The e-PAN card can be downloaded for free of cost by visiting https://www.onlineservices.nsdl.com/paam/MPanLogin.html for all the PAN card applications submitted to the National Securities Depositories Ltd (/NSDL) e-Gov where PAN is allotted or changes are confirmed by ITD within last 30 days.
