Government made Pan cards compulsory when filing returns thereby making the entire income tax process a lot easier. People can apply for their Pan cards through India’s first bilingual Pan Agency. All they have to do is head to the site and Pan Card Apply or hit the पैन कार्ड link for a Hindi download.

Recent surveys show that there are only 30 million people in the country paying income tax, however, there are 170 million Pan cards created through the system. This was in 2014 and by 2016, there were a shocking 24.37 crore Pan cards with the public.

Out of these, it seems like only 6.2 crore were linked to Aadhaar cards. This is quite shocking since the Government has made the Pan and Aadhaar linking mandatory when filing income tax returns. This could only mean that there are many individuals in the country, not paying their income tax or using ‘linking the Aadhaar card’ as a reason not to file their returns.

In an effort to clean up the system, the Government took a bold step and cancelled 11.44 lac Pan cards across India. They then told people their reasons for cancelling specific Pan cards and created a portal for people to make sure their cards weren’t cancelled in the process.