Finance Minister
Nirmala Sitharaman today has officially launched the facility to provide instant
Permanent Account Number (PAN) using
Aadhaar number based e-KYC. The beta facility was earlier launched in the February 2020 on the e-filing website of the income-tax department.
The facility is a paper-less, free of cost and on real-time basis facility. As per the income
tax department, the turn-around-time of alloting the PAN is 10 minutes. Only those applicants who have a valid Aadhaar number and have a mobile number registered in Aadhaar. An electronic PAN (e-PAN) is issued to the applicants free of cost, said department on its
Twitter handle.
The launch has come after the intial announcement was made in the Union Budget 2020. While making the announcement, FM said, "In the last Budget, I had introduced the interchangebility 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 alloted online on the basis of Aadhaar without any requirement for filing up of detailed application form."
Since the launch of 'Beta version' on trial basis on February 12, 2020, 6.77 lakh instant PANs have been allotted with a turnaround time of about 10 minutes, till May 25, 2020. Further, it may also be noted that as on May 25, 2020, 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 32.17crore are seeded with Aadhaar so far, said the ministry's press release.
The process of applying for
instant PAN using Aadhaar number is very simple. The instant PAN applicant is required to visit the e-filing website of the income tax department to provide her/his valid Aadhaar number and then submit the OTP received on her/his Aadhaar registered mobile number.
On successful completion of this process, a 15-digit acknowledgment number is generated. If required, the applicant can check the status of the request anytime by providing her/his valid Aadhaar number and on successful allotment, can download the e-PAN. The e-PAN is also sent to the applicant on her/his email id, if it is registered with Aadhaar.
The launch of the Instant PAN facility is yet another step by the income tax department towards Digital India, thereby creating further ease of compliance to the taxpayers.