PAN Card Format Explained — What Each Character Means

Your PAN (Permanent Account Number) is a 10-character alphanumeric code issued by the Income Tax Department of India. It looks like: ABCDE1234F

Far from being random, every single character in a PAN encodes specific information. Here's a complete breakdown.

Characters 1–3: Jurisdiction Code

The first three characters are uppercase letters assigned to the Assessing Officer (AO) — the Income Tax office that has jurisdiction over you. This is geographical in nature.

For example: DLN might indicate a Delhi-based jurisdiction, while MUM relates to Mumbai. The exact mapping isn't publicly documented by the IT Department, but in practice this doesn't matter for validation purposes.

Character 4: Entity Type (The Most Informative)

This is the most meaningful character. It tells you what type of taxpayer holds this PAN:

Character	Entity Type
P	Individual (Person)
C	Company
H	Hindu Undivided Family (HUF)
F	Firm / Partnership
A	Association of Persons (AOP)
T	Trust
B	Body of Individuals (BOI)
L	Local Authority
J	Artificial Juridical Person
G	Government

If someone gives you a PAN for KYC and the 4th character is 'C', you know it's a company PAN — not an individual's. This is useful for detecting mismatched documents.

Character 5: Surname Initial

For individuals (entity type 'P'), this is the first letter of the surname of the PAN holder. For example, if your surname is Kumar, this character would be 'K'.

For non-individual entities (companies, trusts, etc.), this is the first letter of the entity name.

Characters 6–9: Sequential Number

These four digits are a sequential number ranging from 0001 to 9999. They differentiate multiple taxpayers who have the same jurisdiction code, entity type, and surname initial.

Character 10: Alphabetic Check Digit

The last character is an uppercase letter (A–Z) computed as a check digit. Unlike Aadhaar's Verhoeff algorithm, the PAN check digit uses a simpler modulo-based calculation.

Putting It All Together: A Real Example

Let's decode ABCPE1234F:

ABC — Jurisdiction code
P — Individual person
E — Surname starts with E
1234 — Sequential number
F — Check digit

Try decoding your own PAN with our PAN Validator tool — it decodes all fields automatically.

Common PAN Validation Questions

Can two people have the same PAN? No. Each PAN is unique. However, there have been rare cases of duplicate PANs due to data entry errors — which is exactly why the IT Department has deduplication drives.

Is PAN linked to Aadhaar? Yes, PAN-Aadhaar linking is now mandatory for all individual taxpayers. Failure to link resulted in PAN becoming inoperative after the 2023 deadline.