India
Income Tax Department Introduces App To Help Paying Taxes And Tracking Refunds
Income Tax Department Introduces App To Help Paying Taxes And Tracking Refunds
The Income Tax department has developed a mobile app to help taxer payers in paying tax and tracking their refunds and is considered issuing PAN cards on the real-time basis using Aadhaar biometric. Santosh Kumar Gangwar, State for Finance Minister, has said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha, “Income Tax Department is considering issuing of Permanent Account Number (PAN) on a real-time basis using Aadhaar’s e-KYC facility. The proposal of this method is at an initial stage of consideration.”
Besides, he said that the mobile app had been developed for paying taxes online. The mobile app has the functionality to pay taxes and track refunds. He said the Income Tax department’s PAN allotment system is integrated with the Ministry of Corporate Affair’s portal for allotment at the time of incorporation of a company.
He said that a turnaround time of 4 hours is prescribed for the allotment of PAN card after receipt of PAN application from Ministry of Corporate Affair’s portal to PAN service provider NSDL eGov portal. Besides, the Income Tax department has started online PAN application facility using Aadhaar based e-signature or digital signature certification.
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Santosh Kumar said, “Also, online paperless PAN application facility using Aadhaar based e-signature and e-KYC is accessible through the websites of PAN services providers like NSDL eGov and UTIITSL. In this facility, Aadhaar data is utilized for the allotment of PAN, and there is no need to upload any scanned copies of the document.” The Aadhaar-based e-KYC service would allow individuals or entities are wanting to apply for PAN card to verify the details such as date of birth of the applied or address by way of biometric identification using thumb impressions.
The government has issued more than 111 crores of Aadhaar numbers so far. The unique identification number is being used for opening bank accounts, transfer of subsidies, getting a new SIM card, and also for biometric-based digital payments under Aadhaar Enabled Payment System. As per the estimation of government, every year 2.5 crores of people across the country apply for PAN cards. At present, there are more than 25 crore PAN card holders in the country.