Assessing Officer to apply directly for PAN allotment in arrears demand cases without PAN

Income Tax Department has issued an instruction ( ITBA-PAN Instruction No.4) dated 1st March, 2016 to all Chief/Principal Commissioners regarding allotment of Permanent Account Number (PAN) in arrears demand cases.

The instruction has been issued in response to the references received from field formations about the requirement of allotment of PAN in arrear demand cases where though recovery of the demand has been effected but the same has not been deposited into the Government account for want of PAN of the concerned assessee.

The CBDT has instructed that the allotment of PAN in such cases will meanwhile be facilitated through PAN service providers UTIITSL  as per the following procedure:

1. The Assessing Officer (AO) will send a formal request for allotment of PAN in Form No. 49A or Form 49AA for correctly capturing information regarding PAN applicant in structured format by PAN service provider, to respective Computer Centre through his/her JCIT/Addl. CIT/PCIT giving basic parameters as described in para 3 of the AIS Instruction No. 56.

2. While forwarding duly filled in PAN application form, AO will ensure to fill information of  status, sex and AO code in respective columns alongwith a certificate that assessee had not obtained PAN , is not available for making an application for PAN now , and there is a recovery of arrear demand in case which needs to be deposited in bank.

3. Communication address field in PAN application form should be the official address of the concerned Assessing Officer so as to identify cases where PAN has been allotted in pursuance of special procedure.

4. On receipt of PAN application from respective field formation, RCC will scrutinize it for its completeness and required certification by the concerned AOs and forward the application to  the 0/o the Addl. Director General(Systems)-1 in the Directorate to facilitate allotment of PAN. Forwarding letter of AO and RCC compulsorily contain official email address and mobile phone number for use in case of any enquiry and information of PAN allotted.

It has been specifically provided that the requests for allotment of PAN will not be entertained by the Directorate unless they are routed through the jurisdictional JCIT/Addl. CIT, CIT/PCIT and respective RCC. No direct application for allotment of PAN from field formations will be processed at Directorate ‘s level.