Soon get a PAN card in just 48 hours

You will no longer have to wait 15 days or so to get the Permanent Account Number (PAN), as the government aims to deliver it within 48 hours.

“Our effort will be to allot PAN within 48 hours from the time an application is made online,” a senior government official said here on Tuesday. This will be the next reform move after the April 10 notification when tax authorities simplified the procedures for obtaining PAN. Now, a voter identity card or Aadhaar number will be sufficient for establishing identity, date of birth and address.

Earlier, three different documents for the three purposes were required. The official also said that a ‘Jan-Dhan’ kind of approach will be adopted to expand the PAN base.

”Camps will be organised at district levels,” he said, adding that preparatory work is on for the new initiative, which will be announced soon.

It may be noted that the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana has been recognised by the Guinness Book of World Records for openin

g 1.80 crore bank accounts in one week (August 23-29, 2014), which was possible because of a camp-based approach.

The effort to ease the process and increase the PAN base is part of the government’s strategy to tackle the menace of black money.

According to the official, when the Budget proposed mandatory quoting of PAN for any cash purchase or sale exceeding the value of ₹1 lakh (from ₹5 lakh at present), many trade groups, especially bullion merchants, said the PAN base is low, especially in rural areas, adding that the move will hurt their business.

According to a Parliament question, over 20.95 crore PANs have allotted till July 25, 2014. The official said a greater number of PANs will help in tracking high-end expenditure and thus curb domestic black money generation. The Income-Tax Department has a mechanism called Annual Information Returns (AIR) that tracks high-value transaction with the help of PAN.

Meanwhile, the official said that the number of income tax assesses had crossed four crore for 2013-14. With the department conducting a vigorous drive against non-filers of the income tax and with the use of more and more AIR data, the number of people filing returns has gone up. However, the official claimed that the effort is not to harass return filers through scrutiny.

“Out of 4.70 crore returns for 2013-14, just around six lakh were taken up for scrutiny,” the official added.