Soon you can get your e-PAN card in less than 10 minutes

The Income Tax department is trying its best and working on a new plan to assign an e-PAN (Electronic PAN) card instantly to the applicants. Anurag Singh Thakur, Minister of State for Finance has told the Lok Sabha that the government is planning a PAN/TAN processing centre which will be able to allot e-PANs in real-time or a maximum of 10 minutes.

5 things to know about the new e-PAN cards:

1) Anurag Singh Thakur told the Parliament "Real Time PAN/TAN Processing Centre (RTPC) is being contemplated for future with the objective of allotment of e-PAN through Aadhaar based e-KYC on near to real-time basis (in less than 10 minutes)."

2) Following a notification issued by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) in December 2018, e-PAN cards issued electronically in PDF format with a QR code are valid PAN cards.

3) The Income Tax department will issue Electronic PAN Card (e-PAN) in the electronic format by using e-KYC. Shared by email, e-PAN is a digitally signed document that can be submitted as proof of identity to other agencies electronically.

4) However, Indian citizens having a valid Aadhaar card can only avail the e-PAN facility.

5) The time consumed for allotment of the regular physical PAN cards is also likely to come down soon as I-T department is trying to upgrade allotment processes and infrastructure. The minister said Income Tax department is taking measures to further reduce the time needed to allot PAN, mainly for applicants applying through the Aadhaar-based e-KYC route.