The government on Thursday formally launched the facility for instant allotment of Permanent Account Number or PAN card.
The PAN applicants with a valid Aadhaar number and a mobile number registered with Aadhaar can avail the facility, Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said.
The allotment process is paperless and an electronic PAN (e PAN) is issued to the applicants free of cost. “6,88,727 requests for instant PAN allotment were received up to May 25, 2020 out of which 6,77,680 instant PAN were allotted with turnaround time of just 10 minutes,” CBDT added.
“As on 25 May, a total of 50.52 crore PANs have been allotted to the taxpayers, out of which, around 49.39 crore are allotted to the individuals and more than 32.17 crore are seeded with Aadhaar so far,” it noted.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced the launch of instant PAN facility in budget 2020.
“In the last Budget, I had introduced the interchangeability of PAN and Aadhaar for which necessary rules were already notified. In order to further ease the process of allotment of PAN, soon we will launch a system under which PAN shall be instantly allotted online on the basis of Aadhaar without any requirement for filling up a detailed application form,” Sitharaman had said.
How to apply for instant e-PAN
To apply for an instant PAN card, go to the e filing website of the income tax department. Share Aadhaar number and submit the OTP generated on the Aadhaar registered mobile number.
Once the process is completed, a 15 digit acknowledgement number is generated. Now, the e PAN card can be downloaded. A copy will also be emailed to the applicant. The government has made it mandatory to link PAN cards with Aadhaar within June 30, 2020.
