Structure and validation of PAN

• PAN structure is as follows: AAAAA9999A: First five characters are letters, next 4 numerals, last character letter.
• The first three letters are sequence of alphabets from AAA to zzz
• The fourth character informs about the type of holder of the Card.Each assesse is uniquely

C — Company

P — Person

H — HUF(Hindu Undivided Family)

F — Firm

A — Association of Persons (AOP)

T — AOP (Trust)

B — Body of Individuals (BOI)

L — Local Authority

J — Artificial Judicial Person

G — Government

• The fifth character of the PAN is the first character
  • (a) of the surname / last name of the person, in the case of a "Personal" PAN card, where the fourth character is "P" or
  • (b) of the name of the Entity/ Trust/ Society/ Organisation in the case of Company/ HUF/ Firm/ AOP/ BOI/ Local Authority/ Artificial Jurdical Person/ Govt, where the fourth character is "C","H","F","A","T","B","L","J","G".

• The last character is a alphabetic check digit.

Nowadays, the DOI (Date of Issue) of PAN card is mentioned at the right (vertical) hand side of the photo on the PAN card.

The central government has introduced a new online service called "Know Your PAN" to verify or validate new and existing PAN numbers,