« Top Headlines » Open DEMAT Account in 24 hrs  New Income Tax Act: ITR forms to be issued prior to FY28, says govt  GSTR-9C Explained: Turnover Limit, Due Date, Statement Format & How to Prepare It in Tally Prime (2025 Update)  Will Income Tax Department release new ITR forms by January 2026? Finance Ministry says this  The Government of India has strengthened MSME protection through strict payment rules, ensuring that Micro & Small Enterprises receive timely payments from buyers. Under the MSME Development Act (MSMED Act), 2006, buyers must make payments within:  ITR Refund Delays in India: Why They Happen & How to FastTrack Your Refund in 2025  ITR Refund Delay: From Bank Errors To Department Checks, 5 Big Reasons Your Refund Gets Stuck  Income Tax Slabs 2025: New Vs Old Regime; Which One Is Better For You For FY2025-26?  Seamless Integration: How Tally Prime Connects Businesses to the Digital Economy  Govt to notify new ITR forms, Income Tax Act 2025 rules by January 2026: CBDT chief  Digital Efficiency for MSMEs: The Tally Prime Advantage  5 Ways Tally Prime Reduces Cost and Boosts Productivity for Startups «  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.