PAN Card: Taxpayers in India are required to have a valid Permanent Account Number (PAN) for all financial transactions. It is important to keep track of your money movement. Therefore, PAN is required to pay income tax, receive tax refunds and receive communications from the Income Tax Department. PAN is a unique 10-digit alphanumeric identifier issued by the Income Tax Department.
But what if you have more than one PAN number?
Sometimes people may have more than one PAN due to mistake, multiple applications, change of surname after marriage or for fraudulent purposes.
However, having multiple PAN numbers is illegal and attracts a monetary penalty. Hence, obtaining or possessing more than one PAN number can attract a penalty of up to Rs 10,000. Hence, it is important to avoid having more than one PAN.
If you have more than one PAN, you should immediately initiate the process to cancel the additional PAN to avoid facing any legal penalties.
How to return second PAN?
To do so, you need to fill and submit the PAN Change Request application form, mentioning your current PAN at the top of the form, as per information available on the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) website.
All other PAN/s inadvertently allotted to you should be mentioned in item no. 11 of the form and the copy/s of the relevant PAN card should be submitted along with the form for cancellation.
This way, you can surrender the additional PAN allotted to you.
To ensure that you are not allotted an additional PAN, ensure that you do not apply for a new PAN when you move from one city to another. Since PAN is a permanent number, it does not change on change of city.
