Permanent Account Number (PAN) is a ten-digit alpha-numeric number, issued by the Income Tax Department. Each assessee (e.g., individual, firm, company, etc.) is issued a unique PAN.
PAN enables 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, etc. PAN, thus, acts as an identifier for the ‘person’ with the tax department.
- PAN structure is as follows: AAAAA9999A. First five characters are letters, next four are numerals, last is a character letter
- If PAN does not follow the above structure, PAN will be shown as invalid
- The fourth character of the PAN must be one of the following, depending on the type of assessee:
- 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 Judicial Person
- G – Government
- The fifth character of the PAN is the first character of the surname / last name of the person (in case of personal PAN card, the fourth character is “P”) or of the name of Entity / Trust / Society / Organisation