Nearly half of population now have PAN, male-female ratio coming down, show I-T dept data

Nearly half of India’s population has not got Permanent Account Number (PAN), latest data from the Income Tax Department showed. Though the gap between the number of male and female PAN holders still exists, but that is closing now.

The data also showed that over 14 crore PANs are facing the threat of becoming in-operative as they have not been linked with Aadhaar (as on March 31).

According to the data, over 74.67 crore PANs have been issued till March 31, 2024 which is 10 per cent higher that 67.67 crore as of March 31, 2023 which is nearly 2500 per cent over 2.76 crore as of March 31, 2014. Nearly 97-98 per cent of PAN holders were individuals and the number of male holders was higher than that of female holders.

According to the data, male-female ratio is coming down. It was 1.96 in FY14. It was dropped to 1.69 at the end of FY19 and it was further dipped to 1.35 at the end of FY24.

Officials have listed multiple reasons for the rise in the number of PAN holders. Besides the mandatory requirement of PAN in various financial transactions, reasons such as higher rate of tax deducted at source (TDS) or tax collected at source (TCS) in the absence of PAN or inoperative PAN and ease of obtaining PAN contributed to the growth of PANs.

With the further rise of number of female investors, the gap between male and female will come down further, per the officials.

Out of 74.67 crore PANs, over 60.5 crore have been linked with Aadhaar till March 31, 2024. The mandatory PAN-Aadhaar linkage helped in weeding out large number of duplicate PANs.

After many extensions, June 30, 2023 was set as the last date for linking and from July 1, any such unlinked PAN became ‘inoperative’. However, such a PAN can be made ‘operative’ by paying a late fee of ₹1,000.

If PAN-Aadhaar is not linked, an individual is not entitled for income tax refunds.

Also read: Deductors can collect TDS/TCS at normal rates even if PAN is not linked to Aadhaar by May 31

Though such individual gets the refund after the linkage, no interest amount will be paid for withholding the refund.

Notably, in the absence of linkage, TDS or TCS is two times more than the normal rate.

Also, an inoperative PAN can be a hindrance to various financial transactions. Rule 114(B) of the Income-Tax Rules prescribes 18 types of financial transactions where quoting PAN is mandatory. These include all transactions related to the sale or purchase of a vehicle (excluding two-wheelers), opening a bank account (Jan Dhan or a basic account is exempt), applying for a credit or debit card, and opening a demat account.

Finance Act, 2019, prescribes the interchangeability of PAN and Aadhaar. This means if one does not have PAN, he can quote unique identity number for all the 18 financial transactions where quoting PAN is mandatory. Here, too, an SMS alert is generated. When one doesn’t have PAN and quotes Aadhaar number, the I-T Department automatically allocates a PAN to from the back-end.

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