« Top Headlines » Open DEMAT Account in 24 hrs  BackBack Income Tax Act amendment on cards on tax treatment of MSME dues  ITR-1, ITR-2, ITR-4 forms for FY 2023-24 available for e-filing. Check details here  Income tax slabs FY 2024-25: Experts share these 8 benefits for taxpayers in new income tax regime  How To File ITR Online - Step by Step Guide to Efile Income Tax Return, FY 2023-24 (AY 2024-25)  Old or new tax regime for TDS on salary? This post-election 2024 event will impact your tax planning  What Are 5 Heads Of Income Tax?  Income Tax Dept releases interim action plan for FY25 on tax collection, refund approvals   Income Tax Return: 5 lesser-known tax-saving tips from Section 80  Income Tax Return: 5 lesser-known tax-saving tips from Section 80  Why you need not rush to file your ITR immediately  Income tax returns: ITR-1, ITR-2, ITR-4 forms for FY 2023-24 available for e-filing «  No tax 'relief' in non-processing zones of SEZs'... Legal fees to UK solicitors not taxable... » I-T cancels 742,000 duplicate PAN cards May, 07th 2007 The Income Tax (I-T) Department weeded out more than half of the duplicate PAN (Permanent Account Number) cards that had been detected last fiscal.    Of the 1.31 million duplicate cards that were being used by wily individuals to avoid taxes, the department had cancelled about 742,000 cards as of March this year, against around 10,000 PANs cancelled in the previous year, said a senior I-T official.    Many assesses got duplicate PANs by submitting multiple applications, each giving different particulars. The department decided to undertake an exercise for de-duplication of PANs to clean the database.    The department still has lakhs of duplicate PANs on its database, though it had fixed a deadline of March 31 to complete the process. Mumbai and Delhi together had one lakh such accounts, the official said.    Finance ministry sources said maximum number of duplicate cards were detected in Mumbai (163,000) and Delhi (306,000), which together have highest number of tax payers and contribute over 40 per cent of total direct tax collections.    They said the Income Tax Department could not speed up the process of cancellation of duplicate PANs in small towns due to administrative problems and shortage of staff.    The sources said in towns like Patiala, Shillong, Meerut, Rohtak and Patna, the process of deleting duplicate PANs has now virtually started.    In Patiala alone, the I-T department had found 47,111 duplicate PAN cards, out of which 525 were cancelled at the end of the last financial year.    Official sources admitted that a substantial number of income tax assesses were facing problems in getting refunds due to duplication of PAN cards. The department had decided to stop the payment of refunds in case of duplicate PANs.    The ministry has claimed that field offices have been directed to complete de-duplication exercise in a time bound period. The software in this regard has been enhanced to speed up the de-duplication process, but it could take a couple of months to complete the process, sources said.