Ahmedabad, 2 July 2012

Indian Railway has taken a decision to show only five digits of PAN number on reservation charts for Tatkal tickets.

“Only five digits of PAN no to be shown on reservation charts for Tatkal tickets”, said a one line statement issued by Western Railway’s Ahmedabad division PRO on Monday evening.

This step has been taken apparently after the railway received complains that PAN card number on railway chart can be misused to carry out benami transactions.

The Indian Railways accepts the PAN card as identity proof to book tickets under the scheme, but anybody can access the details as they are published on reservation charts pasted on compartments.

The system had became boon for benami transactions after the Finance Act 2012 made it mandatory for traders like jewellery dealers to collect a tax from customers on the purchase of jewellery worth Rs 2 lakh and above.

While compiling tax collection at source (TCS) rules for collection, payment and uploading of that information, jewellery dealers have to furnish the PAN of customers.

For some customers it is inconvenient to provide the PAN as they have constraints in explaining their sources of money. Traders may try accommodate high net-worth customers by quoting a benami PAN, particularly the name, sex and age from reserved railway compartments. The income-tax department could ask the tax-payer to explain the source of income for such transactions. The onus was on genuine tax-payers for a fault of traders. The settlement of such disputes often takes more than two years.

The details on misuse of PAN card through reservation charts was first revealed by intellibriefs.

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