PAN Card Validator.

A PAN is a ten-character alphanumeric identifier issued by the Income Tax Department under Section 139A. The format is five letters, four digits and one letter, for example ABCPK1234L. The first three letters are an alphabetic series running from AAA to ZZZ. The fourth letter indicates the type of holder: P for an individual, C for a company, H for a Hindu Undivided Family, F for a firm or LLP, A for an association of persons, T for a trust, B for a body of individuals, L for a local authority, J for an artificial juridical person and G for government. The fifth letter is the first letter of the surname for an individual or of the name for any other entity. The four digits are a sequence number, and the last letter is an alphabetic check character. The validator tests each of these positions.

It identifies the category of taxpayer. P is an individual person, including sole proprietors who use their personal PAN for the business. C is a company incorporated under the Companies Act, private or public. H is a Hindu Undivided Family, which is a separate taxable person with its own PAN. F is a partnership firm, and limited liability partnerships are also issued PANs with F. A is an association of persons, such as a registered society, a club or an unincorporated joint venture. T is a trust, which covers most charitable and religious organisations and many NGOs. B is a body of individuals, L a local authority such as a municipal corporation, J an artificial juridical person such as a university or a temple deity, and G a government entity. For a business, the fourth letter is a quick way to check that the PAN on an invoice matches the legal form the vendor claims.

For an individual, the fifth letter is the first letter of the surname or last name as recorded in the PAN application. For every other type of holder, company, firm, HUF, trust and so on, it is the first letter of the name of the entity. So a person named Rahul Kumar would have K as the fifth letter, and Sunrise Traders Private Limited would have S. The check is useful for catching a PAN that belongs to someone else, but it is not foolproof, because the surname recorded with the department can differ from the one a person uses: many South Indian applicants record the father name or an initial as the surname, and married women may have registered a maiden name. Treat a mismatch as a reason to ask, not as proof of an invalid PAN.

No. A PAN has no publicly documented checksum, so no offline tool can distinguish an issued PAN from a well-formed string that was never issued. The validator confirms only that the structure follows the rules, which is enough to catch typing errors but not fraud. To confirm that a PAN exists, is active, is linked to Aadhaar and matches a name and date of birth, use the Verify Your PAN service on the income tax e-filing portal, the bulk PAN verification facility on TRACES for deductors, or a licensed PAN verification API through NSDL Protean or UTIITSL. Banks, brokers and payment companies are required to use those services for KYC; this page is a first-pass cleaner, not a substitute.

Section 206AA requires a deductor to apply the higher of the normal rate or 20 percent when the payee has not furnished a PAN, and a PAN that is structurally invalid or does not belong to the payee is treated as not furnished. Since the 2023 rules, a PAN that is inoperative because it is not linked to Aadhaar attracts the same higher rate. The TDS return in Form 26Q is validated against the PAN database, and entries with invalid PANs are flagged and the credit does not reach the payee Form 26AS. Checking the format on this page, then verifying on TRACES before filing, avoids both the higher deduction and the correction statements that follow a rejected return.

Yes, in practice. A sole proprietor uses their personal PAN for the business, and it is required to open a current account, register under GST, receive payments from companies that deduct TDS, and file the income tax return. Partnership firms, LLPs, companies, trusts and societies need their own PAN as separate taxable persons. Section 139A also requires a PAN to be quoted for cash deposits above Rs 50,000 in a day, purchase or sale of immovable property above Rs 10 lakh, cash payments above Rs 50,000 to hotels or for foreign travel, and several other transactions. An NGO needs its own PAN to apply for 12A and 80G registration and to file Form 10BD listing donor PANs.

Not in bulk; the tool checks one PAN at a time and is meant for cleaning doubtful entries by hand. For a list of several hundred donors or vendors, the Income Tax Department provides bulk PAN verification on the TRACES portal for registered deductors, and NSDL Protean and UTIITSL offer a paid online PAN verification service for entities that need it regularly. Those services confirm that each PAN is issued and return the name as recorded, which is what a Form 10BD or a TDS return actually needs. Use this page for the handful of entries that look wrong, and the official services for the whole file.

No. The format check runs entirely in your browser with a pattern match; there is no server call, no logging and no history. That is deliberate, because a PAN is sensitive personal data under the DPDP Act and should not be sent to a third party without a reason. When you do need to verify a PAN against the department database, do it on the e-filing portal or through a verification service your organisation has a contract with, and keep the PAN copies you collect in a locked folder or encrypted drive rather than in a shared spreadsheet.