Some of the interesting facts about India.

Important facts about a Permanent Account Number issued by India's government:

Meaning of the Numbers on a PAN Card

Here is what a PAN card looks like:

Unlike credit cards or cheques, which have only numerical codes, PAN Cards have a 10 digit alphanumeric sequence. Let’s look into what each character of this sequence means:

The First 3 Characters

Every PAN card's first 3 characters represent an alphabetic series running from AAA to ZZZ.

The 4th Character

This 4th character represents the status of a PAN holder, which can be one of the following:

• 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 Juridical Person
• G — Government

So, a private individual will have the 4th character as P.

The 5th Character

This fifth character of a PAN card is the first letter of:

1. The surname in the case the status is “P”, or,
2. The name of whatever Entity, Trust, Society, Organization, HUF, etc. in all other cases

A (e.g., an individual with the name of Vivek Kumar Shukla), PAN card will have S as the fifth character.

If you change your surname after marriage or due to any other reason, your PAN card number will remain unchanged.

The 6th to 9th Characters

The next four numerals are sequential numbers running from 0001 to 9999.

The 10th Character

The last digit is an alphabetic check digit which is generated by applying a formula to the preceding nine letters and numbers.

Below is a pictorial representation of the above information that easily explains the meaning of numbers on a PAN card:

Source@Meaning of Numbers on a PAN Card

PS: With the arrival of a recent Goods and Services Tax (GST), two additional characters will be added at the tail of a Pan Card Number which represent originating states. From what I know, this was heard in a news debate.