« Top Headlines » Open DEMAT Account in 24 hrs  Mock Test Papers Series - I & II for Students appearing in CA Foundation January 2027 Examination.  Income Tax Rules 2026: CBDT Introduces Revised Form 161 for Penalty Waiver, Clarifies Misreporting Categories and Taxpayer Relief  ITR Filing and Income Tax Audit Deadline Extended: 5 Critical Things Taxpayers Must Know  Filing Belated ITR for AY 2026-27? Know Which Losses You Can Carry Forward and Which You May Lose  CBDT Extends Tax Audit Report Deadline to October 21, ITR Filing Last Date to November 21 for AY 2026-27  CBDT Extends AY 2026-27 ITR Filing Deadline for Tax-Audit Cases: New Dates and Key Compliance Details  Foreign Assets Missing From Your ITR? Income Tax Department Opens One-Time Disclosure Window  Tax Audit Deadline September 30: Why AIS, TDS and GST Figures May Not Match Your ITR and What Taxpayers Should Do  Tax audit deadline September 30: Common mistakes taxpayers should avoid  Your ITR says ‘verified’, but the refund hasn’t arrived? 5 reasons why your money could be stuck  Missed the ITR Deadline but TDS Refund Is Due? Here’s How You Can Still Claim Your Money «  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.