There is no longer a service on the Income Tax e-filing portal that lets you find your PAN number by name and date of birth alone. The old “Know Your PAN” tool has been retired, and the current portal at incometax.gov.in requires either your Aadhaar number (with OTP verification on your Aadhaar-linked mobile) or the PAN itself as a starting point. If Aadhaar is out of reach, the reliable routes are the documents you already have and the institutions that hold your PAN on file.
Retrieve Your PAN Using Aadhaar on the Income Tax Portal
If your Aadhaar and PAN are already linked, the e-filing portal will show you your PAN. Go to incometax.gov.in and choose the “Instant e-PAN” or “Check Status/Download e-PAN” option. Enter your Aadhaar number, complete OTP verification on the mobile number registered with Aadhaar, and the portal displays your PAN.
This is the fastest official method, and in practice it is what has replaced the older name-and-date-of-birth lookup. If your mobile number is not linked to Aadhaar, or the linking between PAN and Aadhaar was never completed, the portal won’t be able to return the PAN this way, and you’ll need to fall back on documents.
Find Your PAN in Documents You Already Have
Your PAN number never changes once allotted, so any old paperwork carrying it is still valid. Before doing anything else, check:
- Any Income Tax Return acknowledgment you’ve filed. The PAN sits at the top.
- Form 26AS or the Annual Information Statement, if you’ve ever downloaded your tax credit statement.
- Bank account opening documents. Banks are required to collect PAN for most account types.1Press Information Bureau. Rules Regarding Quoting of PAN for Specified Transactions Amended
- Salary slips and Form 16. Employers print PAN on TDS certificates.
- Mutual fund and investment statements. Any financial institution you’ve invested through will have PAN on the records they send you.
- An old photocopy of the PAN card itself. Even a scan from years back gives you the same number.
Most people who think they’ve lost their PAN find it here, in a file folder or an email attachment, within a few minutes of looking.
Ask Institutions That Hold Your PAN
If nothing turns up in your own papers, contact a bank where you have an account, your current or former employer’s payroll team, or any mutual fund or broker you’ve dealt with. Banks collect PAN for almost every account type except basic no-frills accounts such as Jan Dhan accounts.1Press Information Bureau. Rules Regarding Quoting of PAN for Specified Transactions Amended Payroll teams need PAN to deduct TDS, so they always have it. Each institution has its own identity-verification process before releasing the number, but they can share it back to you.
Verify the PAN Is Still Active
Once you have a number, confirm it is still operative. The e-filing portal offers a “Verify Your PAN” service, and this is where your name and date of birth do come back into the process — as inputs to check a PAN you already have, not as a way to discover one.
Enter your PAN, full name, date of birth, and a mobile number you have access to. A 6-digit OTP is sent for validation; it is valid for 15 minutes and you get three attempts.2Income Tax Department. Verify Your PAN User Manual After successful verification, the portal shows whether the PAN is active or inoperative.
What to Do if Your PAN Shows Inoperative
The usual reason a retrieved PAN comes back inoperative is that it was never linked with Aadhaar. Under Section 139AA of the Income Tax Act, every individual who held a PAN as of July 1, 2017 and is eligible for Aadhaar must link the two.3Income Tax Department. Link Aadhaar FAQ An inoperative PAN carries real financial consequences:
- TDS on payments such as fixed deposit interest and dividends is deducted at 20% instead of the usual 10%.
- TCS rises to 5% or double the regular rate, whichever is higher.
- Any tax refund owed to you is held until the PAN becomes operative, with no interest on the delay.
- TDS credits don’t appear in Form 26AS, and deductors may be unable to issue valid TDS certificates.
- You cannot submit Form 15G or 15H to prevent TDS on interest income, even if you’re below the taxable threshold.
Salaried individuals with an inoperative PAN can be pushed into deduction at the highest applicable slab rather than their real rate. You reactivate the PAN by linking it to Aadhaar through the same portal and paying a fee of Rs 1,000.3Income Tax Department. Link Aadhaar FAQ
If You’ve Never Been Allotted a PAN
No retrieval method works if there is no PAN to retrieve. If you’ve never had one, the Income Tax portal’s Instant e-PAN service issues a digitally signed electronic PAN free of cost, using your Aadhaar number and Aadhaar-linked mobile OTP.4Income Tax Department. Instant E-PAN User Manual Two conditions matter: this service is strictly for people who have never been allotted a PAN, and the applicant must be a major with up-to-date Aadhaar KYC details.5Income Tax Department. Instant e-PAN FAQ It cannot be used to replace a lost card or rediscover an existing number.
If Instant e-PAN doesn’t fit your situation, Indian citizens apply using Form 49A and foreign citizens use Form 49AA, submitted through the Protean (formerly NSDL) or UTIITSL portals.6Income Tax Department of India. Form PAN