FM launches facility of instant PAN through Aadhaar based e-KYC
29 May 2020
1
Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday formally launched the facility for instant allotment of PAN (on near to real time basis). This facility is available for those PAN applicants who possess a valid Aadhaar number and a mobile number registered with Aadhaar. The allotment process is paperless and an electronic PAN (e-PAN) is issued to the applicants free of cost.
It may be recalled that in the Union Budget, 2020, the finance minister had announced plans to launch instant PAN facility. “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 of detailed application form,” she stated in her Budget speech.
While the facility of instant PAN through Aadhaar-based e-KYC has been formally launched, its ‘Beta version’ on trial basis was started on 12 February 2020 on the e-filing website of the Income Tax Department. Since then, 6,77,680 instant PANs have been allotted with a turnaround time of about 10 minutes, till 25 May 2020.
It may also be noted that as on 25 May 2020, a total of 505.2 million PANs have been allotted to the taxpayers, out of which, around 493.9 million were allotted to the individuals and more than 321.7 million are seeded with Aadhaar so far.
For applying for instant PAN, the applicant is required to access 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, further improving ease of compliance for the taxpayer.
.webp)
