Fourth character of the PAN card gives information about the cardholder while the fifth character is first letter of the surname if it belongs to an individual
If you are holding a Permanent Account Number (PAN), keep this number with you and ensure it doesn’t get revealed to anyone because it hides some information about you which may be useful for somebody with mala fide intentions. Since a PAN card brings a universal identification to all financial transactions, one must make sure that it shouldn’t be revealed in public domain. After all, a PAN card is an alphanumeric identifier, issued to all judicial entities identifiable under the Indian Income Tax Act, 1961. It is issued by the Indian Income Tax Department under the supervision of the Central Board for Direct Taxes (CBDT) and it also serves as an important proof of identification.
The ten digit character of the PAN card is a unique number provided by the CBDT which is mutually exclusive. In this ten character first five are letters followed by four digits and then a letter again. first three characters of the code are 3 letters forming a sequence of alphabets letters from AAA to ZZZ.
The fourth character informs about the holder of the card. Each holder is uniquely defined by a type of holder defined by a letter from the list below:
A — Association of Persons (AOP)
B — Body of Individuals (BOI)
C — Company
F — Firm
G — Government
H — HUF (Hindu Undivided Family)
L — Local Authority
J — Artificial Juridical Person
P — Individual (PROPRIETOR)
T — Trust (AOP)
E – LLP (Limited Liability Partnership)
The fifth character of the PAN is the first (1st) character of either:
(a) of the surname or last name of the person, in the case of a “Personal” PAN card, where the fourth (4th) character is “P” or
(b) of the name of the Entity, Trust, society, or organisation in the case of Company/ HUF/ Firm/ AOP/ Trust/ BOI/ Local Authority/ Artificial Judicial Person/ Government, where the fourth character is C, H, F, A, T, B, L, J, G.
The last or 10th character of the PAN card is an alphabetic digit used as a check-sum to verify the validity of that current code.
